Rumpelstiltskin

3

I could not shake the feeling that I was at least partially responsible for Vicky’s death and her daughter’s abduction. I did not even know little Allison’s last name, and this oversight caused in me a remorse almost as deep as the lingering guilt. My partner Frank maintains that the three guiltiest minority groups on the face of the earth are Jews, Italians, and Divorced Men. I cannot speak for either of the two ethnic groups, but I can certainly affirm that guilt played a large part in my signing the settlement agreement proposed by Susan’s attorney and later offered to me by my own attorney, Eliot McLaughlin. Susan has never allowed me to forget the fact that I was “whoring around,” as she puts it, with a woman crazy enough to have attempted suicide over me, and that if it had not been for my “adolescent behavior” my daughter would not now be shuttling back and forth between two homes but instead would be enjoying a bona fide family relationship “like all the other little girls in Calusa.” Susan forgets that the divorce rate in Calusa is roughly what it is in the rest of these United States: forty percent of all married couples get divorced here annually. Most of my daughter’s close friends, in fact, are the victims of — well, there I go. Victims. It is difficult to resist Susan’s propaganda, especially when each time I arrive to pick up Joanna she will say, “It’s your father,” in a tone of voice that makes it clear she is really saying, “It’s your son-of-a-bitch, no-good, philandering father.” Frank says this feeling of guilt will never pass. He tells me he knows men who have been divorced for ten or more years who still dream nightly about their former wives. I have dreamt about Susan only once since the divorce last June. That Monday morning, as I left the Public Safety Building and began walking the ten blocks to our offices on Heron and Vaughan, I had the feeling I would be dreaming about Vicky and about what had happened last night for a long, long time to come.

It was going to be another beautiful day. The digital clock on top of the Southern Florida Bank and Trust Company building flashed the hour — 11:20 a.m. — and then the temperature: it was seventy-two degrees already, and the sun was still forty minutes from its zenith. The sky behind the building was cloudless and blue; the early morning mist that had been there when I’d made the drive downtown in Sergeant Halloway’s radio motor patrol car had burned off completely. In Calusa the cops patrol one man to a car, and they hang their hats on a hook over the visor on the passenger side. From the rear the hanging circle of the hat looks like a person’s head and creates the illusion of a second officer in the car. The illusion works only with the tourists; any resident of Calusa, including the thieves, knows there is only one cop in that car. As I waited for the light to change in front of the Harris Brothers Department Store on U.S. 301, a patrol car went by. The driver’s hat was hanging as usual over the passenger seat. The driver turned to look at me, and so strongly did my sense of guilt return that for a moment I believed there actually were two patrolmen in that car, and that both of them were closely scrutinizing me. The light changed to green. I crossed the street in the hot morning sun.

There was yet another feeling, almost as difficult to dispel as the one of guilt. I could not forget that when Vicky came out of her house last night to tell me her daughter was coming down with something, I’d immediately thought she was lying. I tried to rationalize this now as I had last night. I’d been disappointed, I’d been rejected (or so it seemed at the time), and so I’d chosen to believe that Vicky was inventing an excuse to spare my feelings: she hadn’t wanted to be alone with me at my place, and a concocted cough and attendant fever seemed the easiest way out of it. But that was before she’d invited me in, that was before we’d shared the joints and the cognac and the tumultuous acrobatics in her bed. So if she hadn’t been lying as a way out of prolonging our evening together, why had she been lying?

She had entered that house promising she’d be gone only as long as it took “to get the grass and to look in on Allie.” Three or four minutes later she had returned with what I felt certain was a false story. It seemed reasonable to assume that in those three or four minutes she had learned something that had caused her to change her mind about leaving her young daughter alone in there with a sitter. It seemed further reasonable to assume that fifteen-year-old Charlene Whitlaw might know just what that something was.

Unless a kid is lucky enough to get into Calusa’s exclusive public high school “for the gifted,” officially called Bedloe by the School Board but snidely referred to as “Bedlam” by the parents of children who have not passed the stringent entrance exams; or unless a kid is rich enough to afford one of the area’s two private preparatory schools — St. Mark’s in Calusa itself, and the Redding Academy in nearby Manakawa — then the secondary school educational choices are limited to three schools, and the selection is further limited by that part of the city in which the student happens to live. It would be nice to report that white parents in Calusa dance joyously in the streets when faced with the possibility of their children attending Arthur Cozlitt High, which has an unusually high percentage of black students. This, alas, is not the case. I have had at least a dozen irate parents trotting into my office in the past several years, asking if there was not some sort of legal action they might take to effect a transfer from Cozlitt to either Jefferson or Tate, each with a more normally balanced ratio of black to white students.

Calusa is a city of a hundred and fifty thousand people, a third of them black, a tiny smattering of them Cubans who have drifted over to the West Coast from Miami. There used to be a restaurant called Cuban Mike’s on Main Street, and it made the best sandwiches in town, but it closed last August when someone fire-bombed the place. The whites blamed the blacks; the blacks blamed the rednecks; and the handful of Cubans in town kept their mouths shut lest fiery crosses appear on their lawns one dark night. One of these days Calusa is going to have a racial conflagration that will blow the town sky-high; it is long overdue. In the meantime everyone here pretends that this is still the year 1844; I think Frank and I may be the only people in all Calusa who notice that at any performance given at the Helen Gottlieb, only half a dozen people in the audience will be black — in an auditorium that seats two thousand.

Charlene Whitlaw lived on Citrus Lane in the southeastern part of the city, which meant that she normally would have attended Cozlitt High. But a call to the School Board — on the brief stop I made at my office — garnered the information that she was a student in her sophomore year at the highly prized Bedloe on Tantamount and Crane. I told Cynthia I would be going there before lunch and would be back in the office at three, in time for my only afternoon appointment.

Cynthia asked me what had happened at the police station. I told her, and she promised to fill Frank in when he returned from Globe Title and Guaranty. The Ghia had been baking in the sun all morning; the black vinyl seats were hot to the touch. I drove southward on Oleander, an avenue paralleling 41, but not as well known by the tourists, and then turned east on Tarpon and began a series of jigs and jogs in an attempt to avoid traffic lights; full-stop signs were easier to cope with in Calusa, and left turns onto busy highways were to be avoided at all costs.

It was a little past twelve-thirty when I pulled into Bedloe’s parking lot on Tantamount. The kids were all outside eating lunch in the sunshine. I asked a bosomy seventeen-year-old in cutoffs and a tight pink sweater where the main office was, and she directed me to a low, white-stucco building in a cluster of similar buildings that sprawled leisurely across the campus. On the playing field a dozen or more boys and girls were yelling too loud as they played a game of pick-up volley ball. A fussy secretary with a pencil in her hair told me that Charlene Whitlaw was at present on her lunch hour — as was every other Bedloe student — but that she was scheduled for an English class in Building Number Four, the one with the purple door, at one o’clock. Belatedly, she asked me who I was. I told her I was Charlene’s uncle.

The kids began ambling back to their classes at ten minutes before the hour. Charlene was wearing the same blue jeans and man’s tailored shirt she’d had on last night; I wondered if she’d slept in her clothes. She recognized me the moment she came around the side of the building, and a frightened look darted into her eyes. She had, after all, been interviewed by the police sometime early this morning, and it was she who’d told them a man named Mr. Hope had come into Vicky’s house last night at eleven-thirty. She must have thought for a moment that I was there to do to her what I had done to Vicky, or at least what she assumed I’d done to Vicky.

“Charlene,” I said at once, “it’s all right, I just want to ask you some questions.”

“I didn’t tell them anything,” she said, and began backing away from me.

“I’ve already been to see the police... ”

“Just your name,” she said.

“Yes, that’s okay, I’m a lawyer,” I said, “there’s no problem.”

Telling people you’re a lawyer seems to have a soothing effect on them, in direct contradiction to the inescapable fact that the nation’s prisons are full of hundreds of lawyers who have committed unspeakably heinous crimes. My words seemed to calm Charlene. She took a tentative step closer.

“I didn’t think you did it,” she whispered.

“You’re right, I didn’t.”

“Was it Mr. Bloom you talked to?”

“Yes.”

“He scared me,” Charlene said.

“He shouldn’t have, he’s a very nice man.”

“It was terrible what happened, wasn’t it?”

“Awful.”

“Who do you think did it?”

“I don’t know.”

“The man who called?”

“What man?” I said at once.

“The one who called last night.”

“Did he give you his name, Charlene?”

“No. He just said to tell Vicky he’d be stopping by to collect.”

“Collect what?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Did he say money, or...”

“No.”

“Or... anything at all? What the something might be that he was coming to collect?”

“No, he just said, ‘I’ll be stopping by to collect,’ that’s all.”

“When was this, Charlene?”

“Well, actually he called three times.”

“Last night?”

“Yes. The first time was just after the taxi picked up Vicky to take her to the Greenery. That was about...”

“Yes, what time was... ?”

“About ten to eight, just after I got there.”

“But she’d already left when he called, is that right?”

“Oh, sure, she had to sing at nine, you know.”

“Yes, I know that. What did he say that first time?”

“He just said he wanted to talk to Vicky, please, and I told him she wasn’t there just then. I never tell people who call when the people I’m sitting for’ll be back. That’s a bad mistake. I saw this movie once where a person who’s planning to rob a house makes a call and the sitter answers and he finds out from her when everybody’ll be home and all, and that way he knows there’s just the sitter in the house, you see. So he can come rob it.”

“Uh-huh. When did he call the next time?”

“About ten-thirty.”

“And what’d you tell him then?”

“I told him she was out walking the dog just then, and couldn’t come to the phone. She doesn’t even have a dog, but I didn’t want him to know she’d be back late ’cause then he’d know I was all alone in the house. With just Allison, you know. Who’s only six, you know.”

“And the last time?”

“When he called again, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“About a quarter past eleven, just before you guys got back. That was when he said to tell her he’d be stopping by to collect.”

“But he didn’t say what that might have been? Money, or trash, or laundry, or...”

“No.”

“And he didn’t leave his name? Or a number where he could be reached?”

“No. I asked him who should I say called, but he said to just give her the message.”

“What did he sound like, Charlene?”

“Gee, I don’t know.”

“Well, what kind of voice did he have? Did he sound young or old or... ?”

“Gee, I really couldn’t say. I mean, he didn’t sound really old, you know. I mean, not like you or my father.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But he didn’t sound like a teenager, either, if that’s what you mean.”

A loud bell sounded somewhere on campus. The kids lounging around outside began filing in through the purple door. The doors on the other buildings, I now noticed, were all painted in different colors. This was a school for the gifted, but it was apparently necessary to color-code the doors so that the students could find their classrooms. My partner Frank, in his inimitable fashion, once said that a school for the gifted in the State of Florida was the equivalent of a 600 school in New York City. A 600 school, I think, is a school for slow learners.

“I have to go to class now,” Charlene said.

“Just a few more questions,” I said.

“Okay, but really I do have to...”

“Was Allison coughing a lot last night?”

“Allison? No. Who said she was coughing?”

“Did you give her some Nyquil to put her to sleep?”

“No. I gave her a glass of milk and some graham crackers at ten o’clock. Vicky said she could stay up late to watch her favorite show on television, but that she had to go to bed right after it. So I gave her the milk and graham crackers and put her to bed.”

“But no Nyquil.”

“No.”

“And no coughing.”

“None at all.”

“Did you tell Vicky you thought Allison might have a fever?”

“No, why would I have told her that?”

“Did you tell her about those various phone calls?”

“Oh, sure, of course.”

“Charlene,” I said, “thank you. You’d better hurry up, you don’t want to get a late slip.”

“Did they have late slips when you went to school, too?” she asked, as if amazed that such a practice had been in effect during the days of the Holy Roman Empire.

“Yes,” I said. “Charlene, thanks a lot.”

“I hope they get him,” she said.

She seemed not to know that little Allison had been abducted. I did not tell her otherwise. I watched as she opened the purple door and went into the air-conditioned classroom, and then I walked back to where I’d parked the Ghia, wondering if I should tell Morris Bloom what I’d learned about the mysterious phone calls last night. As Bloom had informed me, though, this was not a movie. I decided to share with him everything I knew.

He was not too terribly appreciative.

He told me, first of all, that this was a homicide he was investigating here, not to mention a kidnapping, and that whereas he could maybe understand my wanting to follow up on something I thought might be pertinent to the investigation, he nonetheless would hate to think that an amateur (the word rankled) by conducting his own investigation might somehow give the killer an edge he certainly didn’t need. He reminded me that in accordance with Section 1201, Subsection (b) of the Federal Kidnapping Statute, the failure to release a victim within twenty-four hours after he’d been unlawfully seized, confined, inveigled, decoyed, kidnapped, abducted, or carried away would create a rebuttable presumption that such person had been transported in interstate or foreign commerce, which meant that the FBI could be called in on this at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, which would be twenty-four hours from when the maid had found Victoria Miller dead and her daughter missing. Until that time the case was the sole province and responsibility of the Calusa Police Department, which would get all kinds of heat if something should happen to that little girl, something maybe as bad as what had happened to her mother.

“Now, Counselor,” he said (and the word “Counselor” rankled, too, because it was more often than not used sarcastically, even among contesting attorneys in a courtroom), “we do not know why this man — if it was a man — took that child. In most kidnappings there is a ransom motive involved, but you don’t kill a woman and then hope to get ransom money from her. We’ve learned from the murder victim’s father — and I’m telling you all this so you can understand my position, Counselor — a man named Dwayne Miller here in Manakawa, that his daughter’s former husband is a man named Anthony Konig who lives in New Orleans, and we’ve been trying to reach him all day to determine whether the killer has contacted him with a ransom demand. He would seem the only likely person to contact, unless the killer thinks this Dwayne Miller is also a candidate, in which case...”

“Did you ask Miller whether he’d been contacted?”

“Yes, and we’ve also set up equipment at his house to handle a trace, should anybody call there. He understands this is a matter of life and death, Counselor, and he loves his little granddaughter and wouldn’t want any harm to come to her, so he knows better than to talk about this to anyone, even though the tendency in a tragedy is to share it with neighbors and friends. The present strategy up here is to cool the kidnapping, wait for the man who took that kid to make the first move. We’ve informed the papers and the television stations in Tampa and Manakawa about the murder, but we haven’t said word one about the kid being missing. We want the killer to make the first move, you understand? Maybe he thinks we don’t even know yet that a child was involved here, maybe he thinks we think she was off visiting a friend or something, and we don’t yet know she’s gone. We want him to make the call, either to the little girl’s father, this Anthony Konig who I now got the New Orleans cops trying to locate so we can get the telephone company in there, in his house there, to install their stuff, or else to the kid’s grandfather, who’s ready and waiting to keep the guy talking forever, or else to us, or the newspapers — which God forbid I hope he doesn’t call because they would like nothing better than to get involved here and maybe screw up the whole thing even if it means endangering the kid’s life. We’re going to be ready and waiting when he calls, if he calls, and we’ve got the edge if he thinks none of us know anything and he has to explain it all at great length while the phone company is trying to trace the call.

“So, Counselor,” he said, “it would be nice to have your word that from this minute on you won’t be running all over the city of Calusa questioning anybody you think might have some connection with this case, as I would hate to have the blood of a six-year-old girl on my hands if I were you, Counselor.”

“I thought this wasn’t a movie,” I said.

“It isn’t.”

“Then stop talking to me as if I’m a fucking Los Angeles private eye.”

There was a long silence on the line.

“Okay,” Bloom said at last, “I’m sorry.” He was silent again. “I don’t like kidnappings,” he said. “I’ve got a daughter of my own.”

“So have I.”

“Okay, I said I was sorry, I’m sorry, okay? But please do me the favor, okay? Stay out of it. We already knew about those phone calls last night, the sitter told us all about them when we talked to her this morning. Okay, Mr. Hope? Please?”

“Okay,” I promised, “I’ll stay out of it.”

But that was before Anthony Konig came to visit me at four o’clock that afternoon.

My three o’clock appointment was with a client whose next-door neighbor’s driveway was encroaching on his property by a full two feet. He didn’t want to force the man, whom he genuinely liked, to rip up the driveway, but at the same time he wanted to know if there was any danger in permitting the encroachment to continue. I told him there was indeed danger of the neighbor’s later asserting rights to the land by virtue of the location and continued use of the driveway. I told him we would have to prepare an agreement that would permit the encroachment but wherein the neighbor would agree not to assert any rights in the future. He seemed doubtful. I assured him everything would be fine and there was nothing to worry about. He still looked doubtful when he left at three-fifteen.

In the next forty-five minutes I placed or answered a dozen phone calls to or from: 1) a man in the Mortgage Department at Florida National who informed me that a former client of ours named Jonas Carlton had just sold a house subject to their mortgage and that the mortgage called for the entire note to be paid upon sale or conveyance of the property; the bank now wanted to call the note due; 2) Jonas Carlton, first at his office and then at 3) his home on Sabal Key. I got no answer at either place. It occurred to me that he might have moved in the time we’d handled the original purchase of the house for him, so I called 4) Florida National to ask if they had a number for him that might be different from the one in my files. Indeed, they had. I then called 5) Jonas Carlton again, in Manakawa this time, seventeen miles to the south of Calusa. I got no answer there, either, so I made a note to try him again in the morning. That was when the phone rang with 6) a man from the Internal Revenue Service who told me that a client of mine was claiming a two-thousand-dollar tax reduction on the purchase of a new home in 1978, and could I provide them with a certificate from the builder, stating that the transaction complied with the requirements for the reduction. I told him I could, and then buzzed Cynthia to ask for the file. She informed me that I had a call waiting from 7) a man whose name she couldn’t pronounce. That was because the man’s name was Kajchrzak. He spelled it for me, and then said that he had been born Frederick Wilson, but that he had been adopted by the Kajchrzak family when he was just an infant and had been known as Frederick Kajchrzak for the past thirty-four years. He now wanted to change his name back to Frederick Wilson, but his adoptive parents resented his lack of loyalty to the family name and had told him they would oppose any application for change. I asked him to come see me, and we made an appointment for the following week. Cynthia buzzed again to say she had the file I wanted. I asked her to come in. She put the file on my desk, and told me that another call was waiting on three. This one was from 8) a client named Arthur Lorring who told me his son had been charged with doing ninety miles an hour in a clearly posted thirty-mile-an-hour zone on a motorcycle with a young lady on the back seat. I told him I suspected this might be considered something more than a simple speeding violation, and gave him the name of a colleague who might handle such a matter better than Summerville and Hope. I then called 9) Benny Weiss, who is a criminal lawyer. I told him to expect a call from Lorring and filled him in on what the kid had done. He confirmed that this would be considered a violation of Chapter 316.192, Reckless Driving, and that Lorring’s son would undoubtedly go to jail for ninety days and would be lucky if he got off without paying a fine as well; in Benny’s opinion, the kid deserved ninety days. I then returned a call from 10) a client of ours who was buying a liquor store, and who had called while I was out to say that the seller’s attorney wanted the value of the liquor inventory to be determined by the shelf price less twenty percent. I told him I wanted the book value to be the basis for determining the value of the inventory, since this was the customary method, and suggested that I call the seller’s attorney. He said I should go ahead, so I called 11) Abraham Pollock, known in the profession as Honest Abe, and told him the retail price was unacceptable to us. He moaned and groaned and said, “Have a heart, Matthew,” more times than I could count, but he finally agreed on the wholesale price plus twenty percent. The call I made just before Cynthia buzzed to announce Mr. Konig was to 12) my dear daughter Joanna.

Susan answered the phone.

“Hello, Susan,” I said. “May I speak to her, please?”

“She’s not home from school yet,” Susan said.

“Oh. Well okay, I’ll...”

“She had Choir today.”

“Right, I forgot.”

“But I’m glad you called.”

This surprised me. Susan was rarely, if ever, glad I had called.

“Oh?” I said.

“Yes. Are you busy this weekend?”

I did not say anything. Was Susan about to extend an invitation to a party? A brunch? A walk on the beach? A beheading?

“Because if you’re not,” she said, “do you think you could take Joanna again? I know you just had her, but this is important.”

This, too, surprised me. Normally, Susan didn’t even like the idea of my seeing our daughter once every other weekend.

“I’d be happy to,” I said.

“What it is,” she said, “I’ve been invited to the Bahamas for the weekend.”

“For the weekend?” I said. The Bahamas seemed a long way away for just a weekend.

“Yes. Georgie Poole is flying down in his plane on Friday afternoon, and we’ll be spending all day Saturday and Sunday on his boat, and then flying back to Calusa again on Sunday night. So can you pick up Joanna at school on Friday? And then take her back again on Monday morning, on your way to work?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll tell her you called.”

She hung up. I stared at the phone receiver. Georgie Poole was one of the richest men in all Calusa, a bachelor in his mid-forties who, it was reputed, had a penchant for television cuties in situation comedies, hence his frequent trips to Los Angeles where, it was further reputed, he had vast real estate holdings on the Pacific Coast Highway. Apparently, his eye had now fallen upon my former wife, a cutie in her own right, and I felt so sorry for the poor bastard that I thought I might send him a dozen roses in consolation. Well, that wasn’t quite true. Susan might have begun behaving like a bitch the moment she’d learned about Aggie and me (God, that seemed like a century ago!), but she hadn’t always been that way, and it was impossible now to forget the many good times we’d enjoyed together. The problem between us — aside from my philandering, which was a secondary problem created by the major problem — was not that one of us had grown up while the other stayed immature; when people give that as a reason for divorce, I always assume they’re lying. Instead, it was that we’d both grown up — but in opposite directions. Somehow the people we’d been when we first got married had evolved into people neither of us knew fourteen years later, and that was unfortunate, that was genuinely sad. I did not like exchanging harsh words with Susan. I did not like the edge to her voice whenever I called the house I used to share with her. I did not like the unkind things she said about me to Joanna, which Joanna repeated as a dutiful and loving daughter. But neither did I like suppressing the frequent sympathy (guilt, Frank would call it) I felt for her. I had once loved her more than life itself. As I replaced the receiver on the cradle, I silently wished her well. A woman could do worse than Georgie Poole.

The intercom buzzed again. It was four o’clock on the longest Monday I’d ever lived through. I flicked the toggle and Cynthia told me there was a man named Anthony Konig waiting to see me.

“Who?” I said.

“Anthony Konig. He doesn’t have an appointment. Nobody today seems to have an...”

“Send him right in,” I said.

The first impression Konig made was of size. He was a man of about fifty-eight or — nine, I guessed, with a massive head that matched his enormous girth; I estimated his height at about six four and his weight at close to two hundred and fifty. His hair was thick and white and worn rather long, spilling recklessly onto his forehead and over his collar. His suit was as white as his hair, and his pastel pink shirt was fronted with a narrow black tie fastened with a simple gold tie tack. Pig-faced, with pale blue eyes magnified behind thick-lensed glasses, he possessed as well a veined, rather bulbous nose and a surprisingly delicate mouth with a Cupid’s-bow upper and a somewhat pouting lower lip. He extended one fleshy hand and said without preamble, “I’m Victoria Miller’s husband, I have a letter from her I think you should see.”

“Her husband?” I said.

“Her former husband.”

“What sort of letter?”

“About wanting me to have Allison in case anything happened to her. Said I should contact you.”

“Contact me?”

“Yes. If anything happened. You’re her attorney, aren’t you?”

“No, sir, I’m not.”

“Then what the hell are you?” he asked.

“A friend.”

“A friend?”

“We saw each other socially a few times. That was the extent of our...”

“Then why the hell did she say I should contact you?”

His voice, until now, had been the well-modulated, evenly inflected vocal instrument of an educated Southerner. A bit whiskey-seared and therefore somewhat rumbling, it nonetheless had revealed not the slightest trace of an accent. Now, as he became more agitated, his face reddening, his white eyebrows pulling into a frown, the regional roots became more apparent.

“Mr. Konig,” I said, “perhaps she’d only planned to talk to me about...”

“No,” he said, “she told me she’d already taken care of it. I have her letter right here in my pocket, where’s that damn letter?” he said, and began fumbling at the inside pocket of the white suit, pulling out first a black pocket-sized checkbook, and then an empty eyeglass case, and finally a letter which he first wagged in the air and then plunked on my desktop. “Well, go ahead,” he said, “read the damn thing.”

The envelope was addressed to Mr. Anthony Konig on St. Charles Avenue, in New Orleans’ Garden District. I pulled the letter free and unfolded it. It was dated January 7; that would have been last Monday. I read it silently:

I looked up at him.

“Well?” he said.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Konig,” I said, “but I see nothing here that would indicate...”

“Let me see that damn letter,” he said, and lurched out of the chair and virtually snatched it from my hands. “Here,” he said, skimming it, “what does this mean if not what I’ve been telling you? I’ve been seeing this man named Matthew Hope...”

“Yes, that’s certainly...”

“... and he is the one you should contact.”

“Yes, but she doesn’t say I’m her attorney.”

“She says you’re an attorney, she says so right here.”

“I am an attorney. That doesn’t make me her attorney.”

“Damn it, the meaning is clear. She talks first about wanting me to have Allison, and then she says I should contact you if the need should arise, those are her exact words, if the need should arise. Now what the hell does that mean if it doesn’t mean you’ve got a paper from Vicky saying I’m to have custody?”

“I have no such paper, Mr. Konig. Perhaps, as I said earlier, she planned to discuss the matter with me, and then in the press of rehearsals for her opening, or...”

“Then why’d she write me if it wasn’t something she’d already taken care of?”

“I don’t know. Did you correspond regularly?”

“Well, yes, but it was always just chit-chat and never anything serious. This letter...”

“Yes, this letter sounds serious.”

“Worrying about something happening to her and all, and then something does happen, she gets herself murdered...”

“Yes.”

“So I’ve got to believe she was afraid of it happening and left instructions for my daughter to come live with me and not somebody else.”

“She left no such instructions with me, Mr. Konig.”

“You keep saying that, but the letter tells me otherwise.”

“I know nothing about her wishes concerning custody.”

“Your name’s right here in this goddamn letter!”

“I know it is. She said we were seeing each other, and that’s true. But as for any specific instructions, either written or verbal, regarding custody of Allison in the event...”

“Well, sir, I don’t understand it,” Konig said.

“Neither do I.”

“I simply do not understand it.”

“In any event,” I said, “I’m certain instructions in a letter wouldn’t be binding on a court.”

There was a long silence. We stared at each other across my desk.

“I want my little girl,” Konig said. “I don’t have a lawyer here in Florida, he’s up in N’Orleans where I live. If you’ll represent me on this, find out exactly what the law says about custody, I’d be grateful.”

“I’d be happy to, Mr. Konig. Would you mind if I held on to this letter?”

“Not at all.”

“Where can I reach you here in Calusa?”

“I’m at the Breakwater Inn, got down here late Saturday, caught Vicky’s second night there at that restaurant on Stone Crab.”

“You’ve been here since Saturday?” I said.

“Yes, sir. Drove down from N’Orleans early Friday morning.”

“Mr. Konig, there’s something I think you should know...”

“What’s that?”

“... but I’m not sure I’m the one who should tell it to you. Maybe you ought to go see the police.”

“What for? I’ve never yet met a policeman worth the tin in the badge on his chest. Are the police going to make sure nobody else gets custody of my daughter? I’ve wanted her all these years, Mr. Hope, I’ll be damned if I’ll let anyone else have her now that Vicky’s gone. What is it you have to tell me?”

I took a deep breath.

“Your daughter’s been kidnapped,” I said.

“What?” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh my God,” he said. “Oh my God. What... who do I... what... oh my God!”

On one of my cards I wrote down Morris Bloom’s name and the address of the Public Safety Building. Then I buzzed Cynthia and asked her if she was free to drive Mr. Konig downtown. He was still shaking when he left my office, and he looked ten years older than when he’d come in.

I did not get home until a little before six. I snapped on the television set and then went to the wall bar to mix myself a double martini — it had been too long a day. I was stirring the Beefeater and vermouth when the Six O’Clock News came on. My partner Frank says that in New York (and I gather he considers this a sign of sophistication) there are so many murders committed every day that the newspapers and television will cover only the goriest of them; to make headlines in New York, you’ve either got to kill a cop or else use a meat ax on your entire family and the upstairs neighbor as well. Calusa has its share of homicides, but we’re not quite that jaded about our response to them; our newspapers and television stations will rarely ignore even an inconsequential .22-caliber killing. “It doesn’t take much to attract a crowd in Calusa,” Frank says dryly. Frank sometimes gets on my nerves, but he is a very good lawyer, and I guess the closest friend I have in the world.

The news commentator now, despite Bloom’s earlier warning to me, reported both the murder and the kidnapping. Either the killer had already made contact or else the police strategy had changed since last I’d spoken to Bloom. I wondered if Konig’s visit to him had had anything to do with the decision to release the news. I also wondered what Konig’s reaction had been when he’d learned about his daughter. He had seemed a volatile man, and men like that can sometimes—

The thoughts that came to me next were sudden and chilling.

Vicky had written a letter that seemed to state she’d made specific plans for her former husband to have custody of their child in the event anything happened to her. If indeed she’d been afraid that someone was about to harm her, the someone couldn’t have been Konig; she’d have been crazy to have written him. But if Konig had wanted custody of his daughter “all these years” as he’d told me in my office just a little while ago, and if he’d already learned from Vicky that she planned to give him custody in the event of her death...

The telephone rang.

I poured the martini glass almost to the rim, and began walking with it toward the bedroom. The phone kept ringing. Outside on the bayou behind the house, a heron — startled by the sound — took sudden wing. I sat on the edge of the bed, the martini glass in one hand, and lifted the receiver.

“Mr. Hope? Tony Konig.”

“Yes, Mr. Konig, how are you?” I said.

“Fine,” he said. “Well, considering. They don’t seem to have much to go on yet. They want to put some equipment in my house back home, trace a call should he make one. Do you think he’ll call, Mr. Hope? They usually call in cases like this, don’t they?”

“Yes, usually.”

“In any event, have you looked up the law for me? I’ve got to keep thinking they’ll find her, you see. I’ve got to keep thinking this’ll all be over one day soon, Allison’ll be back one day soon.”

“I had someone in the office do some checking for me, and I also called Hopkins and Cole — they’re a big shop here in town, they do a lot of custody work.”

“What’d you find out? Does that letter from Vicky mean anything?”

“Not as regards custody. As I suspected, it might serve as evidence of intent, but it wouldn’t be binding on a court.”

“A court? Why does this thing have to go to court?”

“I’m not saying it does. But if someone challenged your right to custody... well, let me take this in order, Mr. Konig, if that’s all right with you.”

“Go right ahead.”

“The letter’s virtually meaningless. Would you know whether Vicky left a will?”

“I don’t know, I’m sorry. Why? Would a will be binding on a court?”

“It would be highly persuasive, yes, and would most likely control unless you were found an unsuitable parent. But even if Vicky died intestate — without leaving a will, that is — you’d undoubtedly get custody of your daughter. In the large majority of instances, the courts have awarded custody to the natural father rather than the maternal grandparents, say, or an aunt, or an older sister, or what have you. Tell me, is there anyone who might challenge your custody?”

“Sure. Vicky’s father. Dwayne Miller.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s a crazy old bastard who thinks he runs the world.”

“Would he have grounds for such a challenge?”

“Like what?”

“Could he claim you’re an unfit father?”

“Ridiculous.”

“Could he say your home’s an unsuitable place in which to bring up a little girl?”

“Utter nonsense.”

“Were you making support payments for Allison?”

“Each and every month.”

“Ever miss any of them?”

“Never.”

“Ever been in trouble with the law?”

“Few parking tickets... and once for speeding, three, four years ago.”

“Do you see Allison regularly?”

“At least once a month, and usually over the entire summer.”

“Has Allison ever lived with her grandfather?”

“No.”

“Well, let me give you some actual rulings, Mr. Konig. Torres v. Van Eepoel, 1957, right here in Florida: A natural parent has a right to the custody — by the way, she is your natural child, isn’t she?”

“What do you mean?”

“She wasn’t adopted? She wasn’t the child of any former marriage Vicky may have...”

“No, no, this was a first marriage for both of us. Allison’s mine, that’s for sure.”

“Okay, Torres v. Van Eepoel: ‘A natural parent has a right to the custody of his or her children absent conduct or conditions that justify a deprivation of the right in the interest of the welfare of the children. This legal right is one that should not be regarded lightly.’”

“Damn right,” Konig said.

“Modacsi v. Taylor: ‘The love and affection of another person, no matter how great, is not sufficient to deprive a fit and proper parent of his child.’”

“Keep on reading, Mr. Hope.”

“Behn v. Timmons — this was a recent one, 1977, also here in Florida: ‘The parent has a natural God-given right to enjoy the custody, fellowship, and companionship of his offspring; except in cases of clear, convincing, and compelling reasons to the contrary, a child’s welfare is presumed to be best served by care and custody by the natural parent.’”

“Mr. Hope, you’ve already earned your fee,” Konig said. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am. What do I have to do next?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? What do you mean, nothing?”

“Once Allison is found...”

“I’m praying that’ll be soon, Mr. Hope.”

“You can simply pack her up and take her home with you.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“Well, fine then, everything seems to be in order. Mr. Hope, I can’t thank you enough for...”

“Few other things, Mr. Konig. Are you sure Vicky never mentioned a will to you?”

“Never. Anyway, what difference would it make? You just told me...”

“Yes, I feel you’re safe as regards guardianship of Allison’s person. I’m talking now about guardianship of her property. Even if Vicky died intestate, her lineal descendant — your daughter, in this case — would normally inherit. I’d like to know whether or not anyone’s been designated guardian of her property. If not, a court would have to appoint one.”

“Well, I don’t know if there’s any will. Is there some way you can find out for me?”

“I’ll check around. The legal community in Calusa is a relatively small one. If Vicky had a will drawn...”

“Yes, please check for me,” Konig said.

“I’ll be happy to.” I hesitated. “Mr. Konig,” I said, “before we end this conversation, and in fact before I do any further work for you, there’re a few things I’d like to know. I hope you won’t take offense, but the questions have got to be asked.”

“What are they?”

“First... did you kill Vicky?”

“What?”

“I said...”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I’d like an answer, if you will.”

“I did not, sir. I loved that woman with all my heart.”

His voice sounded on the edge of tears. I hesitated before asking the next question, but it was another essential one, and it could not be postponed, not if I was to continue representing him.

“Mr. Konig,” I said, “if what you’ve just told me is true...”

“It is the God’s honest truth.”

“Then I’m going to assume, and you correct me if I’m wrong, that you don’t already have physical custody of your daughter.”

“Already have... ?”

“Yes, that you didn’t just come up to my office as a smokescreen, asking me about custody when you’d already taken Allison away from that house...”

“I just told you...”

“... taken her away from there after Vicky was killed — if what you say is true, that you’re not the one who killed her.”

“I didn’t kill her. And I didn’t kidnap my own daughter, either.”

“Did you try to reach Vicky last night by telephone?”

“No, sir, I did not.”

“You didn’t call the house there three times last night?”

“I did not, sir.”

“You didn’t tell the baby-sitter there that you’d be stopping by to collect?”

“No, sir. Did someone do that?”

“Yes, Mr. Konig,” I said. “Someone did that.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“All right,” I said. “All right, I’ll start asking around tomorrow morning. About the will. Are you still at the Breakwater Inn?”

“Yes, I’ll be here till after the funeral Wednesday.”

“And after that?”

He started to give me his home phone number in New Orleans, and then thought better of it; the police would be monitoring that phone, hoping to hear from the kidnapper. He gave me his office number instead and said I could leave word there with his secretary. He’d be checking with her from time to time and would get back to me as soon afterward as he could. He thanked me again and then said good night. There was still that edge of sorrow to his voice.

But I couldn’t stop thinking of his massive size and of what Bloom had said to me this morning: We figure it had to be a man because of the sheer power involved.