Small Vices

Chapter 12

It was a dank fall day, drizzly, and not very cold. All the offices in the big new building across Berkeley Street from my office had their lights on, and even though it was only quarter to eleven, they made a warm pattern in the dark morning. I was having a little coffee, reading a little trial transcript. I’d been feeling overcoffee-ed lately and Susan had reminded me that I was cutting down on it. So today my coffee was an equal mixture of half-decaf and half-caffeinated coffee. Compromise is not always the refuge of scoundrels.

According to the transcript, the names of the eyewitnesses were Glenda Baker and Hunt McMartin. She was listed as a senior at Pemberton College. He was described as a graduate student at M.I.T. Nothing is easy, especially for academics. So it took me three phone calls and just under an hour to establish that Hunt had graduated from M.I.T. with a master’s degree in electrical engineering. It took another half hour to get the alumni office to tell me that his current address was in Andover, where he worked at the McMartin Corp. in Shawsheen Village.

Glenda was trickier.

Since my name was anathema at Pemberton, I had to employ guile. I called the alumni office and said my name was Anathema and I was with the IRS.

“We have an income tax refund for Ms. Glenda Baker, which has been returned by the postal service. Would you have a more recent address for her?”

“What did you say your name was?”

“Anathema,” I said. “Pervis Anathema, refund enactment agent.”

“May I call you back, Mr. Anathema.”

“Certainly. If the line’s busy, please keep trying. I have calls stacked up.”

Then I broke the connection, left the phone off the hook, and walked across the hall to the interior designer showroom across from my office. The receptionist was twenty years old and going to modeling school nights. When I interrupted her, she was studying the cover of Cosmopolitan. Her blond hair stood straight up, with a small maroon highlight streak. She wore white makeup with black lipstick and black nail polish. She was dressed for success in a plaid shirt over a scoop-necked black leotard top, and an ankle-length black dress with peacocks on it. Peeking out from under the skirt were shoes that looked sort of like black combat boots except for the high heels. When I was in Korea I’d had zippers put in on the sides because it was so tiresome to lace them all. I couldn’t tell if Lila had gone that route.

“Lila,” I said. “Time to pay me back for letting you leer at me through the office door.”

“You see me leering,” Lila said, “you’ll know it.”

“My phone is going to ring in a minute. You pick it up and say ‘Internal Revenue Service,’ with those great overtones you got. They’ll ask for Mr. Anathema and you say ‘one moment please’ and hit the hold button. If they say something else, like ‘refund department’ or whatever, just say ‘one moment please’ and hit the hold button.”

Lila looked another wistful moment at the cover of Cosmo and said, “Anathema? What kind of name is that?”

“Greek,” I said.

Lila shrugged and said, “Sure.”

She folded up the magazine and followed me over to my office. I hung up the phone and we waited.

“Ain’t it illegal to impersonate the IRS?” Lila said.

“I believe so,” I said.

The phone rang and Lila picked it up, said her piece, and pushed the hold button.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” Lila said. “You owe me lunch.”

“Yes, I do,” I said, and pushed the hold button. “Anathema.”

“Mr. Anathema, Catherine Grant at Pemberton College. Glenda Baker lives in Andover at The Trevanion Condominiums.”

“Is there a street address?”

“No sir, that’s the only address we have. She has a married name now as well, Glenda Baker McMartin.”

“Thank you,” I said and hung up.

Spenser one, Pemberton zero.