Джо Горес - Gone, No Forwarding

“For the record once again, please, what is your name?”

“Jeffrey L. Simson.”

“Have you gone by any other names?”

“Yes, sir.” Simson obviously had been well-briefed. “Jackson J. Jacoby, that’s J-A-C-O-B-Y, and Jeffrey J. Jacuzzi, that’s J-A-C-U-Z-Z-I.”

“What a lot of names. How old are you, Mr. Simson-Jacoby-Jacuzzi?”

“Objection. Those were professional pseudonyms, not—”

“I withdraw the question in that form. Your age, Mr. Simson?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Where do you live?”

“One-four-seven-two Fort Point, Los Angeles.”

“How long have you lived there?”

“For I guess a month or something like that?” Tranquillini saw his opening, but did nothing to show he was going through it. “And before that?”

“Avenue Fifty in Eagle Rock. Near Occidental College.”

“What number on Avenue Fifty?”

“Um... Gee, I’m not sure...”

“How long were you at number um Avenue Fifty?”

Delaney was on his feet. “Your Honor, counsel’s sarcasm is neither witty nor necessary. The witness is responding as best—”

“I apologize to the witness,” said Tranquillini meekly. “How long were you at the Avenue Fifty address?”

“Well, I guess it must have been... maybe four or five months.”

“And before that?”

“In San Francisco for two years.”

Tranquillini took a chance. “Most of that at a single address, I believe?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Could you give us that address, please?”

Delaney had another objection. As Tranquillini had hoped, he obviously was trying to keep Simson’s homosexuality out because he thought that was what Tranquillini was trying to get in. “I fail to see the relevance of this line of questioning.”

“Is that an objection?” asked the Hearing Officer.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Overruled.”

“Do you remember the address, Mr. Simson?”

“Not the street number — thirty-three-hundred something. It was just a block off Mission Street.”

“You had a roommate there, did you not, who—”

Delaney was up. “Objection.”

“I withdraw the question. Do you remember which street it was, Mr. Simson?”

“Ah... Sure! It was Twenty-fourth Street.” He smiled in relief. “Thirty-three, uh... Yes: Thirty-three ninety-six.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Simson,” said Tranquillini in a suddenly significant voice. He looked up from his papers. “When did you work for Kearny Associates?”

“From some time last year until—”

“What was the specific date you started working for them?”

“I believe it was... ah... September? October?”

Delaney was on his feet again. “Does counsel plan to take this man through the last year of his life minute-by-minute?”

“This does seem rather extended, Mr. Tranquillini.”

Tranquillini avoided saying what he was doing: establishing

I the witness’s obvious difficulty in remembering detail. Instead, he said, “I request the utmost latitude with this witness because his is the only direct evidence against my client which the State has yet produced. Therefore I feel—”

“Counsel is stalling, Your Honor.” Delaney was advancing on the bench. “He has no direct evidence of his own...”

“If the State would quit interposing objections, I could proceed with my interrogation. But since we are discussing motions, Your Honor, I am still waiting for a ruling on mine of Monday afternoon concerning a subpoena for Mr. Pivarski...”

Delaney was shouting. Tranquillini covertly checked his watch. Oh yes. Old time was yet afleeting. Every minute spent this way gave Bart Heslip extra time to look for Verna Rounds.

If Zebulon Rounds had been white, he’d have been a good ole boy. But he was black, and what investigative ploy was going to work with a 250-pound black redneck?

Fleur hadn’t had the street address out in Kenner where he lived, near the airport, which was upper-crust black and had obviously been white a few years earlier. But she was able to recognize the house, where Rounds’ wife was out in halter and shorts trimming an honest-to-God magnolia tree. Also wearing a mouse under one eye and a swollen jaw, neither of which had come from an afternoon bridge game with the girls.

Posing as an insurance salesman, complete with clipboard and clear-glass horn-rims and a fruity manner, Heslip had been led out West End Boulevard to Bucktown and a dazzling white, crushed-shell parking lot near Lake Pontchartrain. It seemed that the uncharitable Mr. Rounds had, like Heslip, been a professional boxer. His career had led him, not to manhunting, but to part ownership of a rather fancy bar-restaurant catering to the tourist trade, which was built out over the water on concrete pilings. When Heslip pounded on the closed front door, it opened on a thin, white, dispirited face with a cigarette dangling from a lower corner of it.

“We’re closed,” said the face.

“Tell Rounds I’ll be waiting in the parking lot,” said Heslip. “Tell him it’s about his daughter.”

Five minutes later a hulking black man with massive shoulders and a strutting stride appeared, his eyes moving suspiciously from car to car until they spotted Heslip leaned against the fender of a Torino hardtop several stalls away from the rent-a-car where Fleur waited. Up close Rounds bore the marks of his former profession on his square, massive face. A flattened nose, thickened lips, scar tissue around the deep-set gorilla eyes. Maybe, Heslip thought, remembering the current wife’s battered appearance, Emmalina was lucky Rounds had dumped her years ago.

“I need your daughter’s address.” Heslip was still wearing the clear-glass horn-rims and carrying the clipboard, but the fruity manner was gone. “Your real daughter. Verna.”

Rounds’ eyes got even meaner than usual. He went into a half-crouch. “Lissen, Oreo, you got no call coming around...”

“Get off it,” Heslip snapped. “We know you never bothered to get unmarried from Emmalina, so your children by the woman you are living with now are illegitimate.” He curled his lips around the word. “Bastards, Rounds. Got it? Now, where’s Verna?”

Rage washed across Rounds’ features but there was also an underlying intelligence and caution Heslip hadn’t expected. This tempered that always smoldering rage, checked it, controlled it. “I ain’t telling you nothing.”

Heslip made a notation on his clipboard, holding it so Rounds could not see what he wrote. “That’s your choice, Rounds.” He looked up. “What’s your social secur... no. The computer has that.”

“What... what’re you writing there?” Much of the belligerence had drained from the big man’s voice.

“You’ll be...” He clicked his pen and pocketed it. “You’ll be served with a Summons and Complaint. Your attorney can explain...”

“Attorney? Summons and Complaint?”

“If it goes against you, you’ll lose the restaurant, of course. Convicted felons can’t be licensed for the on-premises sale of alcohol in this state.”

He turned and started to walk away. Rounds caught his arm.

“Convicted felon? What are you tellin’ me?”

Heslip shook his arm free and dissected him with icy bureaucratic eyes. “We don’t force cooperation, Rounds. That’s outside our constitutional brief. But when we find evidence of a felony committed by someone uncooperative, we feel no urgency to shield that person from the local authorities...”

“But I ain’t done anything!”

“Bigamy’s a felony, Rounds. I would think you’d know that.”

He started off again. Rounds kept pace, hunched and pleading. “Look, mister, it was Emmalina. She ran off, fifteen years ago. I would have gotten a legal divorce, I swear to you, but I couldn’t find her...”