T Is For Trespass

27

The minute she was out the door, I grabbed my jacket and shoulder bag and trotted over to the courthouse, where I entered a side door and climbed the wide red-tile steps to the corridor above. Arches in the stairwell were open to the chill winter air and my footsteps echoed against the mosaic tile walls. I went into the county clerk’s office and filled out a form, requesting the file on Augustus Vronsky. I’d been in the same place seven weeks previously, doing the background check on Solana Rojas. Clearly, I’d screwed that up, but I wasn’t sure how. I sat in one of the two wooden chairs while I waited, and six minutes later I had the record in hand.

I moved to the far side of the room and sat down at a table, occupied largely by a computer. I opened the file and leafed through, though there wasn’t much to see. I was looking at a standard four-page form. A pale X had been typed into various boxes running down the page. I flipped to the end of the document, where I noted the name of the attorney representing Cristina Tasinato, a man named Dennis Altinova, with an address on Floresta. His phone and fax numbers were listed, as was an address for Cristina Tasinato. Flipping back to the first page, I started again, scanning the headings and subheadings, seeing what I already knew. Augustus Vronsky, designated the conservatee, was a resident of Santa Teresa County. Petitioner was not a creditor or debtor or agent of either. Petitioner was Solana Rojas, asking the court to appoint Cristina Tasinato as conservator for the person and estate of the conservatee. I suspected Solana was at the heart of the matter, but it was still a jolt to see her name neatly typed in the box.

Under “Character and estimated value of the property of the estate,” all the particulars were declared “Unknown,” including real property, personal property, and pensions. A box was also ticked stating that the conservatee was unable to provide for his or her personal needs for physical health, food, clothing, or shelter. Supporting facts were apparently spelled out in an attachment that was part of the Confidential Supplemental Information and Petition “on file herein.” There was no sign of the document, but that’s what the term “confidential” implies. In the paragraph below that, a box was ticked indicating that Gus Vronsky, proposed conservatee, was “substantially unable to manage his or her financial resources or resist fraud or undue influence.” Again, supporting facts were specified in the Confidential Supplemental Information, which had been filed with the petition but was unavailable as part of the public record. The signatures of the attorney, Dennis Altinova, and the conservator, Cristina Tasinato, were penned at the end. The document had been filed with the Santa Teresa Superior Court on January 19, 1988.

Also part of the file was an invoice for “Caregiver management” costs, broken down according to fees, month, and running total. For the latter half of December 1987 and the first two weeks in January 1988, the amount requested was $8,726.73. That sum was substantiated by an invoice from Senior Health Care Management, Inc. There was also an invoice submitted by the attorney for professional services as of January 15, 1988, listing dates, hourly rates, and the amount charged off to the conservatorship. The balance due him was $6,227.47. These expenses had been submitted for court approval, and just in case the routing of funds wasn’t clear, the note at the end read, “Please make checks payable to Dennis Altinova: senior attorney time, $200.00/hour; associate attorney time, $150.00/hour; paralegal time, $50.00/hour.” Between them, the newly appointed conservator and her attorney had racked up charges totaling $14,954.20. I was surprised the attorney hadn’t attached a stamped, self-addressed envelope to speed the payment along.

I marked the pages I wanted reproduced-which is to say, all of them-and returned the file to the clerk. While I waited for copies, I borrowed a phone book and looked up Dennis Altinova in the white pages. Under his office address and phone number, his home address and home phone were listed, which surprised me. I don’t expect doctors and lawyers to make personal information available to anybody smart enough to check. Apparently, Altinova wasn’t that worried about being stalked and killed by a disgruntled client. The neighborhood he lived in was pricey, but in Santa Teresa even houses in the shabby parts of town cost staggering amounts. There were no other Altinovas in evidence. I checked the listings for Rojas: many, but no Solana. I looked for the name Tasinato: none.

When the clerk called my name, I paid for the copies and tucked them in my bag.

Dennis Altinova’s office on Floresta was half a block from the courthouse. The police station was on the same street, which came to a dead end at the point where the Santa Teresa High School property picked up. In the other direction, Floresta crossed State Street, ran past the downtown, and eventually butted up against the freeway. Lawyers had staked out the area, settling in to cottages and assorted small buildings whose original tenants had moved on. Altinova was renting a small suite of offices on the top floor of a three-story building with an off-brand savings and loan at street level. If I remembered correctly, the space had once been devoted to an upholsterer’s shop.

I studied the directory in the lobby, which really amounted to little more than a walk-in pantry where you could wait for an elevator that moved with all the speed and grace of a dumbwaiter. The rents here weren’t cheap. The location was prime, though the building itself was woefully out of date. The owner probably couldn’t bear to sacrifice the time, energy, and money required to move tenants out and do a proper remodeling job.

The elevator arrived, a four-by-four cubicle that jerked and shuddered throughout my creeping ascent. This gave me time to examine safety inspection dates and speculate about how many people it would take to exceed the weight limit, which was 2,500 pounds. I figured ten guys at 250 pounds apiece, assuming you could squeeze ten guys into a contraption that size. Twenty women at 125 pounds each was out of the question.

I exited on three. The floor in the corridor was a speckled black-and-white terrazzo marble, rubble in other words, bound with white cement, white sand, and pigment, and reformed as tile. The walls were paneled in oak that was darkened by time. Oversized windows at either end of the hall let in daylight that was augmented by rafts of fluorescent tubing. The entrance doors to the offices were pebbled glass with the names of the occupants stenciled in black. I thought the effect was charming, suggestive as it was of lawyers’ and detectives’ offices in old black-and-white movies.

Altinova’s office was midway down the hall. The door opened into a modest reception area that had been modernized by the addition of a desk made of stainless steel and poured glass. The desktop was bare except for a four-line telephone console. The lighting in the room was indirect. The chairs-four of them-looked as though they’d make your butt go numb minutes after you sat down. There were no side tables, no magazines, no art, and no plants. Certain “interior designers” do shit like this and call it minimalism. What a joke. The place looked like the tenant had yet to move in.

A receptionist came through a door in the back wall marked “private.” She was a tall, cool blonde, too pretty to imagine she wasn’t banging the boss.

“May I help you?”

“I wonder if I might have a quick word with Mr. Altinova.” I thought the word “quick” struck a nice note.

“You have an appointment?”

“Actually, I don’t. I was over at the courthouse and decided I’d chance it. Is he in?”

“Can you tell me what this is regarding?”

“I’d prefer to discuss it with him.”

“Were you referred?”

“No.”

She didn’t like my responses so she punished me by breaking off eye contact. Her face was a perfect oval, as smooth, pale, and unblemished as an egg. “And your name is?”

“Millhone.”

“Pardon?”

“Millhone. M-I-L-L/H-O-N-E. Accent on the first syllable. Some people pronounce it ‘Malone,’ but I don’t.”

“I’ll see if he’s free.”

I was reasonably certain he didn’t know who I was, and if he did know, I was hoping he’d be curious what I was up to. I was curious myself. I knew he wouldn’t give me a snippet of information. Primarily, I wanted to lay eyes on the man who’d drafted the legal papers that eradicated Gus Vronsky’s autonomy. Also, I thought it might be interesting to shake the tree to see if anything ripe or rank hit the ground.

Two minutes later the man himself appeared, holding on to the frame while he stuck his head around the door. Good move on his part. If he’d invited me into his office, he might have given the impression he was interested in what I had to say. His coming out to the reception desk implied that:

(a) he could disappear at will,

(b) that my business wasn’t worth sitting down for, and

(c) therefore I’d better get to the point.

I said, “Mr. Altinova?”

“What can I do for you?” His tone was as flat and hard as the look in his eyes. He was tall and dark-haired with sturdy black-framed glasses resting on a sturdy outcrop of nose. Good teeth, fleshy mouth, and a cleft chin so pronounced it looked as if someone had taken a hatchet to his face. I placed him in his late sixties, but he looked fit and he carried himself with the vigor (or perhaps testiness) of someone younger. The receptionist peered over his shoulder from the hallway, watching our interchange like a kid hoping to see a sibling get bawled out and sent to her room.

“I’m looking for a woman named Cristina Tasinato.”

His expression showed nothing, but he did peer around the door with mock curiosity, scanning the reception area as though Ms. Tasinato might be playing hide-and-seek in the nearly empty room. “Can’t help.”

“Name doesn’t ring a bell?”

“What sort of work do you do, Ms. Millhone?”

“I’m a private investigator. I have some questions for Ms. Tasinato. I was hoping you could put me in touch.”

“You know better than that.”

“But she’s a client of yours, yes?”

“Ask someone else. We have nothing to discuss.”

“Her name appears with yours on a document I saw at the courthouse just now. She was appointed conservator for a man named Gus Vronsky. I’m sure you’ve heard of him.”

“Nice meeting you, Ms. Millhone. You can let yourself out.”

Witty rejoinders in short supply, I said, “I appreciate your time.”

He closed the door abruptly, leaving me on my own. I waited a beat, but his lovely receptionist didn’t reappear. I couldn’t believe she was passing up the opportunity to lord it over me. On the pristine glass desktop, line one on the telephone console lit up-Altinova, no doubt, putting a call in to Cristina Tasinato. The desktop was otherwise bare so I couldn’t even see a way to snoop. I let myself out as instructed and took the stairs down, not willing to risk the elevator, which was little more than a rickety box hanging by a string.

I retrieved my car from the public parking garage, circled the block, and headed up Capillo Hill, in my eternal search for Melvin Downs. Having suffered the indignity of Altinova’s rebuff, I needed the soothing effects of routine work. Where Capillo crossed Palisade, I took a left and continued on Palisade until I saw the campus of Santa Teresa City College coming up on my right. The bench at the bus stop was empty. I cruised down the long hill that curved away from the campus. At the bottom there was a small nest of businesses: minimart, liquor depot, and a cluster of motels. If Melvin Downs did maintenance or custodial work, it was hard to believe he was employed only two days a week. Those were full-time jobs, 7:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M., or hours along those lines. Besides which, the hill itself was long and steep, which meant he’d have had to trudge up that half mile at the end of his workday. Why do that when there was a bus stop half a block in the other direction, closer to the beach?

Back up the hill I went. This time I drove past the college and down as far as the two strip malls at the intersection of Capillo and Palisade. Here my choices were many and varied. On my left there was a large drugstore and, behind it, an independent market that handled local organic produce and other natural foodstuffs. Perhaps Melvin unloaded crates or bagged groceries, or maybe he’d been hired to keep the aisles swept and mopped. I parked in the drugstore lot and went in. I did a walk-through, scanning each aisle as I passed. There was no sign of him. This was Tuesday and if he still worked in the neighborhood, he’d be finishing up in an hour or two. I went out the front exit.

Still on foot, I crossed the street. Walking the length of the mall to my right, I passed two mom-and-pop restaurants, one serving Mexican fare and one leaning more toward the breakfast and lunch trade. I glanced through the window at a shoe repair shop, cased the laundromat, a jewelry store, and the pet-grooming establishment next door. The last small business was a discount shoe store, trumpeting a GOING-OUT-OF-BUSINESS SALE! EVERYTHING REDUCED 30 TO 40 PERCENT. The store was bereft of customers so even the liquidation sale was a dud. I retraced my steps.

At the corner, I waited for the light to change and crossed Capillo to the shops and specialty businesses lined up in a row on the far side of the intersection. I wandered through a craft mart, a drugstore, and a gift-and-card shop, all without success. I returned to my car and sat there wondering if I was completely off base. I’d been encouraged by Vernon Waibel’s assertion that Melvin was still in town, but I had no real reason to believe it. It made me happy thinking I could run him to ground through sheer tenacity, a trait I’ve been blessed with since birth. More to the point, if he’d fled into the world at large, I had no idea how to find him. Better to believe he was still in range.

I started my car and backed out of the slot. I took a right turn onto Capillo and then a left at the light. This put me back on Palisade, moving past a residential neighborhood of small wood-and-stucco homes built in the 1940s. On my right, a road snaked up the hill to houses of a loftier nature with spectacular ocean views. I slowed at a set of crosswalks. A crossing guard watched with care as a string of children made their way from the near corner to the one on the other side. They walked in twos, holding hands, while a teacher and a teacher’s assistant hurried them along.

When the guard nodded that traffic could proceed, I followed the slope of the hill down to the beachside park below. I did a slow circle of the parking lot, taking in the smattering of people I could see. I came out of the lot and turned right again, climbing the hill to the more populated section of Palisade I’d cruised before. How much gas was I willing to burn in the hope he was here?

I drove back to City College and parked in range of the bus stop on the same side of the street. For a while I sat, directing my attention to the campus across the way, the child care center on the near corner, and the block of apartments built into the side of the hill. After thirty unproductive minutes, I started the car again and took a left on Palisade. I’d make one last pass before I gave it up for the day. I reached the end of the imaginary territory I’d assigned to my quarry. At the beach park, I made the turn-around and drove back up the hill to the main intersection. I was stopped for a red light when I spotted him a hundred yards away.

Recognition is a complex phenomenon, a nearly instantaneous correlation of memory and perception, where the variables are almost impossible to replicate. What do we note in one another on sight? Age, race, gender, emotion, mood, the angle and rotation of the head; size, body type, posture. Later, it’s difficult to pinpoint the visual data that triggers the “click.” I was once at a departure gate in Chicago’s O’Hare Airport when I caught sight of a man in profile striding through the terminal in a jostling crowd of pedestrians. It was a split-second image, like a stop-action photograph, before the passengers shifted, blocking him from view. The man I’d seen was an officer I’d trained with as a rookie on the force. I barked out his name and he whipped around, as amazed as I was to spot a known face in unfamiliar surroundings.

I’d talked to Melvin once, but seeing his walk and the set of his shoulders created a response. I yelped in surprise, my gaze flicking to the stoplight. Still red. When I looked back, he was gone. I blinked, my gaze moving rapidly from one side of the street to the other. He couldn’t have gotten far. The second the light changed and I saw a break in the oncoming traffic, I made a left-hand turn and slid into the alleyway that ran behind the stores. No sign of him. I knew I was right. I’d seen the white hair and the cracked brown bomber jacket in my peripheral vision.

I circled back to the main intersection and began a grid search, mentally dividing the block into smaller sections that I could survey in slow motion. Back and forth I went. I didn’t think he’d seen me because he’d been facing the opposite direction, a man on a mission, shutting out all else. At least I’d narrowed the hunt. I continued at a crawl, the drivers behind me merrily beeping their horns in encouragement. I was talking to myself by then, saying, Shit, shit, shit. Come on, Downs, show your face again just once.

After twenty minutes I gave up. I couldn’t believe he’d vanished. I could have parked my car and done another foot search, but the idea didn’t seem productive. I’d return on Thursday and do a proper door-to-door canvass of the area. In the meantime, I figured I might as well go home.

Once in my neighborhood, I parked half a block down, locked my car, and headed for Henry’s back door. I could see him through the glass, settling in his rocker with his Black Jack over ice on the table next to him. I knocked. He got up and opened the door with a smile. “Kinsey. Come on in, sweetie. How are you?”

I said, “Fine,” and then burst into tears. He shouldn’t have called me “sweetie” because that’s all it took.

I’ll skip over the blubbering I did and the halting hiccuping account of the day’s disasters, starting with Melvin Downs, the blunders Nancy Sullivan had made, what I’d learned at the courthouse about the money charged against Gus’s bank accounts, and my visit to the lawyer’s office, with the whole sorry mess coming back to Melvin at the end. I didn’t claim it was the worst day of my adult life. I’ve been divorced twice and some of that drama was in a league of its own.

But on a professional level, this was low.

I unburdened myself, telling him what I said, what he said, what she said, how I felt, what I wish I’d said, what I thought then and later and in between. Every time I reached the end of my recital, I’d remember some new detail and swing back to incorporate it. “What gets me is everything Solana said was exactly what I’d said when I called the county, except she turned it around. I couldn’t deny the disgusting state his house was in so most of what she told Nancy Sullivan was true. His anemia, bruises-all of it. How could I argue? While I was using the facts as evidence of abuse, Solana was using the same information to justify the court’s taking charge of his affairs. It just seems so wrong…”

I paused to blow my nose, adding the tissue to the pile of soggy ones I’d tossed in the trash. “I mean, who are these people? A lawyer and a professional conservator? I can’t get over it. While I was at the courthouse, I went into the library and pulled Deering’s California Probate Code. It’s all laid out, powers and duties-blah, blah, blah. As nearly as I can tell, there’s no licensing process and no agency that oversees or regulates their actions. I’m sure there are conscientious conservators somewhere, but these two have fallen on Gus like vampires.”

Two tissues later, my lips feeling fat from all the tears I’d shed, I said, “I have to give Solana credit-she was clever to invent the business of a quarrel between us. Her claim that I’d threatened her made my call to the agency look like spite on my part.”

Henry shrugged. “She’s a sociopath. She plays by a different set of rules. Well, one rule. She does what serves her.”

“I’ll have to change my strategy. To what, I don’t know.”

“There is one bright note.”

“Oh, great. I could use one,” I said.

“As long as there’s money in his accounts, Gus is worth more to them alive than dead.”

“At the rate they’re going, it won’t take long.”

“Be smart. Don’t let her suck you into doing anything illegal-aside from the stuff you’ve already done.”