Rosemary Harris - Dead Head

I sneaked a look at the guy. He was not much older than me but probably had the wife, the mortgage, two kids, and a dog. And he’d jeopardized it all with one drink too many and one dance of the horizontal hora. He reminded me a little of Grant Sturgis, sandy hair, bland good looks-like a soap star, handsome but not memorable. There were millions of these guys whose regular features would open doors for them and who were, more often than not, confused as hell after they walked through them and didn’t know what to do next.

I used to think of Caroline that way, too, with her subdued palette, the sweater tied artfully around her neck, and her Audrey Hepburn ballet flats. I do remember thinking there was something about Caroline that was different-an inner spark. I just didn’t know it was coming from an inner hash pipe. I instantly hated myself for thinking that and groaned out loud.

“So what stupid thing did you do?” Babe asked. “We know you don’t have a boss.”

“I volunteered for something.”

“Always a mistake,” she said, slapping the counter. “Send a check if you must, but don’t volunteer. And never let yourself be put on any committees. It’s a wonder there isn’t more bloodshed at committee and board meetings.”

Babe was delivering one of her insightful, Babe’s rules monologues, and I let her go on. Buried in her speeches was always something useful, some nugget of wisdom. And it was refreshing to hear chat that wasn’t about Springfield’s newest archcriminal. Besides, it gave me time to think. It was too late to back out. I’d told Grant I would find the person who’d informed on Caroline. I just had to figure out how.

It wasn’t hard to find someone if you knew who you were looking for, but what if you didn’t know? I stared at the counter, waiting for a bolt of lightning or a Saint Paul moment knocking me off my stool and revealing what I should do next. Eventually it came but not from the sky or a religious epiphany. As if coming out of a trance, I heard Babe’s voice, first faint, and then louder.

“Hello, are you listening to me?” Babe said. “There aren’t any answers in that mug.”

No, there weren’t, but there may have been one under it. On the place mat, next to the two-inch ads for unpainted furniture, pictures of pets plastered on T-shirts, and gold-tone trophies for your bowling team was a small ad that read “Think the Rat Is Cheating? Call Nina Mazzo, reasonable rates, discretion guaranteed. Free consultation.”

With enough time and money you could find almost anyone. You could also trace any call, e-mail, or Web site visit, but I didn’t have to make it easy for Nina Mazzo to discover my identity and to figure out what I was doing. If the tipster could be anonymous, I could be anonymous too. I didn’t need to burnish my reputation as a snoop. The next morning, I drove to the main branch of the Springfield library and logged on to one of their public computers to check out Nina’s Web site without leaving a trail from my home computer. Her home page was a basic template, turquoise and gold, not a lot of bells and whistles. More tasteful than I expected, given her stock in trade. It fit with her credentials as a nonpracticing attorney and former child advocate.

Nina’s specialty was tracking down deadbeat dads and getting the goods on spouses who strayed, whatever the goods were. I could only assume she, or one of her employees, was the one who stood in the bushes snapping pictures of couples in flagrante delicto while guys in designer suits made the real money from the subsequent divorce settlements. Like most things, there was a pecking order in the adultery business.

Two or three high-profile attorneys, including Arthur Horowitz, known in some circles as the first wives’ best friend, had provided enthusiastic blurbs that Nina had blatantly incorporated into the banner on her Web site.

So why was she advertising on a place mat?

“Same reason we’re here,” she said in a throaty voice, spreading her arms. She sat opposite me in an overheated barracks-like building not far from the Metro North station. I’d had some trouble finding the place, tucked in as it was between a ceramic tile showroom and a beauty supply distributor. There were two molded plastic chairs, an oversized turquoise desk clearly purchased for a larger office, and the same basic wall clock that you’d see in any hospital or prison.

“Business is off,” she said. “Either people are staying faithful, or the still-rich guys have found better ways to cover their tracks. Alarming prospects for someone like me.”

Whatever the reason, it had Nina spending, in her own words, far too much time chasing down the imaginary bank accounts and safe deposit boxes of someone’s recently deceased granny.

“Half the county seems convinced the old dears socked something away and forgot where they put it, like that women who stashed all her savings in a mattress and then got Alzheimer’s and gave it to Goodwill. Don’t get me wrong-a client is a client.” She cut off her diatribe, her famous discretion finally kicking in.

I unzipped my jacket and unwound the scarf that that been wrapped two or three times around my neck. I swiped at my forehead with the back of my hand.

“I know. I keep it warm in here. I detest the cold. So what can I do for you? It isn’t Grandma’s jewels, is it? No, you don’t have that desperate hoping-for-a-pot-of-gold expression.” She searched my face. “You may actually be worried about something, Miss…” She glanced at the online registration form I had filled out and submitted from the library’s computer.

“Miss Turner, Miss T. Turner?”

All right, I’d been having a musical moment and hadn’t wanted to type in my real name on the online form. I smiled weakly. She looked at me as if she thought I was going to say I was searching for the rest of the Ikettes.

“That’s right,” I said, rearranging my scarf and my thoughts, “Thelma.” It was the only T name I could think of on short notice, other than Tina or Trixie-and I didn’t think I could pull that one off without pretending that I had a husband named Ed and we lived next door to the Kramdens. “My mother was very old-fashioned.” I rambled on stupidly about the name.

Nina Mazzo unstrapped her plain, tanklike watch and put it on the desk in front of her. I got the message.

“I want to find someone,” I said at last.

“Now we’re getting somewhere. Who?” she asked, sitting up straighter and poised to write on her yellow legal pad. “The father who abandoned you? Child you gave up for adoption? We have a very good success rate with cases of that nature.”

“No,” I said.

“Someone you need to subpoena? I have an extremely reliable operative who makes deliveries. Very high percentage there as well.”

I was encouraged that she had had so much experience.

“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know his name, what he looks like, or if he’s even a he.”

She put her pen down. The rest of the meeting went like a riff on the old Abbott and Costello routine “Who’s on First.” I was being intentionally vague, and she wasn’t inclined to reveal any of her methods. Why should she until I was a paying customer? She was deciding how much more time to waste on me when a young man as blank and unformed looking as a Secret Service man entered the office.

She said nothing, he nodded, and she buzzed him into a back office. “One of my operatives,” she explained. It was all very James Bond. I started to think that I had wasted both of our time. “Now back to you.”

After fifteen minutes of circular chat I decided to forgo the rest of my free (you do get what you pay for) consultation and let Nina Mazzo get back to searching for Grandma’s hidden millions. She wasn’t sorry to see me go, but I felt her eyes on me all the way out to the parking lot, where I had to wait for a forklift full of Italian tile to crawl by before I could drive off.