Dave Zeltserman: Fast Lane

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Mary Williams. We have an eleven o’clock appointment?”

I apologized for keeping her waiting and asked her to come in. As she entered the office, I felt a funny feeling start to kick in my chest. It was more than just the way she looked, though. More than just her slender body, or her soft brown eyes, or the way her long black hair flowed past her shoulders. There was a freshness to her, a sweetness. I realized that for the first time in God knows how long I was actually feeling pretty good and it surprised the hell out of me.

“I read your column every month,” she said, looking around her. “This office is so cool. Exactly the way I pictured it.”

“Yeah, it’s not much, is it?”

“It’s perfect!” she said. “Just like a detective’s office ought to be.”

“That’s certainly good to hear,” I said. “Otherwise, I guess I’d need to find a new job.” A little red tinged her cheeks. “I hope you weren’t waiting out there too long.”

“Not too long.”

“But long enough?”

She shifted in her chair. “I’m sorry,” she said. She fidgeted for a moment with her handbag. “I couldn’t help overhearing what was being said. I guess I have the opposite problem of the woman who was just here.”

“You’re sexually abusing your father?”

“What?”

I shook my head, waving off my comment. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I’ve been having a rotten couple of days.”

“He’s abusing his daughter? Is that why you beat him up?”

“No,” I corrected her. “That’s why he fell down a staircase.”

She spotted the pictures on my desk. “Is that her?” she asked, a concerned look forming on her face. “That poor girl.”

I gathered up the photos and dropped them into my bottom desk drawer, next to the rye. “Miss. Williams, how can I help you?”

“Please call me Mary.”

“Okay, Mary.”

“I’d like you to find my parents.”

“You lost them?”

“In a way.” She stared at her hands, a darkness clouding her eyes. “I was adopted. I’d like to hire you to find my birth parents. How much do you charge?”

“Four hundred a day, plus expenses.”

She looked up at me, surprised and disappointed. “I didn’t think it would be that much. I’ve been saving up, but I don’t think I’ll have enough if it takes more than a week.”

“How long have you been saving?”

She gave me a dejected smile. “Two semesters.”

“You’re a student?”

“Trying to be. I’m a sophomore at Denver University.”

I asked her what she’d been doing to save up for this, and she looked away, sort of embarrassed, and told me she’d been working nights at a convenience store. After more prompting, she told me she was putting herself through school. Her parents wanted to pay, but she didn’t think that would be fair, not with her getting a job so she could hire a detective and the way they felt about it. From what she told me, I gathered they weren’t too thrilled with the idea of her searching for her birth parents.

Watching her explain her situation, I wanted to break out laughing. Not out of meanness or anything, only cause of how sweet it was. I mean, here she was going to college all day and working her butt off all night so she could hire a detective to find her parents. I found it touching. I needed a case like this. I needed something where I could do some good for a change. Especially after the last few cases I’d worked on. Anyway, as my poppa used to say: it never hurt none to do a pretty young gal a favor. I told her I’d charge her fifty dollars a day with expenses coming out of my own pocket. Her face lit up brighter than any Christmas tree. I sat back and enjoyed the sight.

“If you don’t mind,” I said, “I might write about this for my newspaper column.”

“That would be exciting.” She lowered her voice, her face reddening a bit. “I’ve been saving your columns for a long time.”

“Well, then, why don’t we get started? How much do you know about your birth parents?”

“Nothing. When I was twelve my parents told me I was adopted. I was a baby when they got me. I don’t have any memories of my biological parents.”

“This may sound silly, but do your parents know who your birth parents are?”

She shook her head.

“You sure?”

“Positive.” She pushed her chin out slightly, challenging me to argue with her. “They got me through an agency. They don’t even know what state I came from.”

I found a pen on my desk and pushed the cap off. “Why don’t you give me the name of the agency?”

She looked at me blankly and said after a while, “My parents never told me it.”

“I’ll need to see your parents. Why don’t we set something up for tonight?”

“I don’t want them involved.” She let out a lungful of air through her mouth. “It will upset them. They think I’m rejecting them as it is. Frank and Julie are wonderful. I love them and think of them as my parents, and I’ll always think of them as my parents, whatever happens. But that doesn’t mean I don’t need to find out who I really am. They just can’t understand that.”

“I need to talk with them, Mary. Otherwise I’m stuck right now.”

She struggled with the idea. “Could you maybe just give them a quick call?” she offered as a compromise.

“Sorry, no. I need to talk with them face to face. I’d just as soon find your birth parents for you as quickly as possible.”

That settled it for her. She nodded slightly and asked if it would be okay if I came over at six thirty. “I have to be at work at eight,” she added.

“Six thirty’s fine.”

She fidgeted some more with her bag. “How much should I pay you?”

“I’ll bill you later. Just write down your parent’s address for me. Also, I’m going to need a picture of you. If nothing else, it will look good on my desk.”

“I’d like to pay you a two week retainer,” she said. “It will make me feel like I’m really doing this.”

I didn’t argue. I could see it was important to her. She wrote me a check and then gave me directions to her parent’s house. She held out her hand to me. It was a nice hand to hold. I felt sorry letting it go.

After she left, I sat back and realized I was feeling better than I had felt in quite a while. There was no reason to worry about what I almost did to Craig Singer.

Not much else happened that afternoon. Eddie Braggs called from the Examiner, asking whether my ‘Fast Lane’ feature would be ready on time and after that, I drove around Denver looking for Debra Singer without any luck.

Mary’s parents lived in Golden, a small town fifteen miles west of Denver, in a cozy little house on a dead-end street. It had a picket fence, trimmed hedges and a small flower garden out front. Mary answered the door, and after introducing me to Lucy, the family golden retriever, she led me into the living room where her parents were waiting. Her mother popped up from the sofa and offered me coffee and pastries. After Mrs. Williams left the room, Mary handed me an envelope. Inside were a studio photograph and several wallet-sized shots of herself. She looked tired as she sat down on a loveseat that was to the right of sofa. Lucy followed her and plopped down by her feet. I took the green velvet armchair with the old-fashioned doilies.

After Mary’s mother brought in the coffee, she joined her husband on the sofa. They were in their early forties, around my age, although they looked quite a bit older than me.

Mrs. Williams took a sip of coffee before looking up. “I know Mary’s very excited about hiring you,” she said.