Bill Pronzini: Bindlestiff

I didn’t want to get into that sort of thing with her, unless it was relevant to the job she was hiring me to do. “You want me to find your father, is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Why? If it’s to convince him to give up the hobo life, I’m afraid that’s not in my-”

“What he does with his life is his own business,” she said. Her voice was full of cold disapproval, like a spinster schoolteacher discussing a wayward child. “I want you to find him and deliver a message, that’s all.”

“What sort of message?”

“That he contact me immediately, regarding his Uncle Kenneth’s estate.”

“I don’t understand, Miss Bradford.”

“His uncle died ten months ago,” she said. “No one in the family thought Uncle Kenneth had any money, but it turned out that he did-all in stocks and bonds. Hardly a fortune, but enough to make several bequests. One to me, one to my sister Hannah, and one to my father, among others: twenty thousand dollars to each of us. The attorneys handling the estate made every effort to locate Daddy at the time the will was probated, but they were unsuccessful.”

“When was it that he dropped out of sight?”

“A year and a half ago, not long after he lost his job with the Office of Minority Business Enterprise.”

“That’s a Federal agency, isn’t it?”

“Yes. And a productive one before that idiot in Washington started his massive cutbacks. My father had been with the Los Angeles branch of OMBE for eighteen years-he worked in Procurement, obtaining construction contracts for minority firms-but this administration has no respect for minorities or for individuals. He was given a month’s notice and thrown out on the street.”

“Did he try to find another job?”

“Of course. The last time I spoke with him on the telephone, just before he… went away, he said he’d been jobhunting almost daily. But he wasn’t qualified for anything except bureaucratic work, and he has no particular skills. No one would hire him.”

I knew all about that. And all about the state of the economy and the high rate of unemployment. Nobody had been willing to hire me during the past two and a half months either. But I said, “Why would he have decided to become a hobo? I mean, he could have taken on menial jobs without traveling around in boxcars. Riding the rails isn’t the kind of thing you expect of an ex-government bureaucrat.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s degrading and disgusting, and I think he’s a fool.” She sounded a little angry now, as if she’d taken the fact that he was hoboing as a personal insult. “But that’s neither here nor there. I suppose he did it because he considers the life of a tramp adventurous.”

“How do you mean?”

“He has always been fascinated by trains,” she said. “And by hoboes, God knows why. His favorite book was that dreadful thing of Jack London’s, The Road. He collected books on trains, and he belonged to a model railroad club in Los Angeles. Our flat was always full of tracks and miniature cars and grown men wearing engineer’s caps. Pure nonsense.”

“Mmm.”

“He’s a fool,” she said.

Maybe he is, I thought, but you’re a pip yourself, lady. I said, “If you don’t mind my asking, why are you going through the expense of locating him?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You don’t seem to like your father very much, and you consider him a fool. Why pay a detective to hunt for him so he can claim his inheritance?”

“He is entitled to the money,” she said stiffly. “My sister may not care if he gets it, but I do; I know my duty.”

“Why doesn’t your sister care?”

“Because she doesn’t care about anyone except herself. She never has. Besides, she’s greedy.”

“Greedy?”

“There is a stipulation in Uncle Kenneth’s will that if any of us were to die before the estate cleared probate, or if any of us fails to claim his bequest within two years, that person’s share is to be divided among the remaining two. Hannah would like nothing better than to get her hands on another ten thousand dollars.”

“She’s not very well off, is that it?”

Miss Bradford’s mouth turned bitter again. “No, that’s not it,” she said. “Hannah doesn’t have to worry about money. Her late husband left her a house in Sonoma-her third husband, and she’s only thirty-three. She ran off to Nebraska with some man when she was eighteen, left him and married a rock musician, and then left him and married Joe Peterson, a man older than Daddy. And now she’s engaged to be married again, to a well-to-do businessman. Thrills and money, those are the only things she’s ever been interested in.”

“I see,” I said. And I did see; Arleen Bradford disliked her sister a hell of a lot more than she disliked her father. Sibling rivalry, maybe. Or maybe she just didn’t like anybody very much.

“That twenty thousand dollars belongs to my father,” she said. “I intend to see that he gets it.”

“It might get expensive, you know,” I said, “my tracking him down. That photo was taken sometime yesterday, and the article says he was on his way to Washington to pick fruit; he’ll probably be long gone by the time I can get to Oroville. If that’s the case, I’d have to go on up to Washington myself…”

“Do whatever is necessary to find him,” she said. “Within reason, naturally. I’ll expect regular telephone reports and an itemized list of your expenses.”

Uh-huh, I thought. I decided not to do any more pursuing of her motives. Whatever kind of screwy love-hate feelings she had toward her old man, and however she felt about her sister, it was really none of my business. She wanted a job done, and I was back in the profession; that was the bottom line. The fact that I didn’t like her worth a damn had nothing to do with it either.

I said, “All right, Miss Bradford. It’s a little late for me to accomplish much today; I’ll leave for Oroville first thing in the morning. And I’ll call you as soon as I have anything to report.”

She nodded. And then got out her checkbook, without my having to ask for a retainer, and wrote out a check for a hundred dollars. I took it in exchange for her signature on one of my standard contract forms. She read the contract twice before she signed it; I would have been surprised if she hadn’t.

Then she said, “Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s almost time for my appointment. I’ll expect a call from you or my father sometime tomorrow. If it’s after business hours, I’m sure I’ll be home; my home number is on the check.” And that was all: I was dismissed. She didn’t get up, she didn’t offer me her hand again, she didn’t even look at me as I stood and went over to the door and let myself out.

Some daughter, I thought on my way to the elevator. Fifteen minutes with Arleen Bradford made me feel relieved that I had never married and had kids of my own.

But I was still in pretty good spirits. Even the likes of Miss A. Bradford hadn’t been able to put a damper on them.

God, it was good to be working again!

It was four-thirty when I got back to my flat. I had taken the telephone answering machine out of the box of stuff I’d brought home when I gave up my office, and hooked it up here, and I checked that first thing. There was one message, another call from Jeanne Emerson. Would I ring her back as soon as it was convenient?

I frowned a little, thinking about her. This was the fourth or fifth time she’d called over the past six weeks-a persistent young lady. An attractive young lady, too; I remembered the long, glossy black hair that hung like a curtain down the small of her back, the perfect oval of her face, the olive-black eyes that slanted only a little. One of the most attractive Oriental women I had ever seen, in fact. I might have been interested in her if it hadn’t been for Kerry-not that she would have been interested in me that way. As it was, Kerry would have been upset if she’d known the sort of male fantasy I was indulging in just then.