Judith Tarr: Household Gods

So, she thought, no surprises. Or should she assume that? If she did, she could make a call or two of her own now without feeling guilty for wasting the time.

Before she reached for the phone book, she called up a file from the computer and printed it out. She wanted to be sure she had all the facts handy. As she read over the two pages from the laser printer’s tray, she smiled grimly.

County Government Offices, the heading in the white pages said. The office she wanted was on Ventura Boulevard, only two or three miles away. She dialed the number. “Good afternoon, District Attorney’s office,” said the voice on the other end. “Family Support Unit — spousal- and child-support cases. How may I help you?”

Nicole steadied herself. Here it was. Moment of truth. She said it baldly, in her best and crispest professional voice. “My ex-husband has been late on a good many child-support payments, and he’s missed a good many others altogether,” she said. “I badly need the money, and I want help collecting it.”

“Please hold,” the voice said without expression. “I’ll put you through to the Child Support Enforcement Section.”

For her listening pleasure, or lack thereof, the FSU offered 101 Strings — soothing enough if you weren’t the sort who preferred acid rock. Nicole, whose taste ran to Top Forty when it ran to anything at all, lived through it until a new voice came on the line: “Child Support Enforcement. This is Herschel Falk. I understand you have a collection problem. May I have the details, please, Ms. -?”

“Nicole Gunther-Perrin,” Nicole said. His silence had an interesting quality: like an open door, or an open mind. She gave him the details he’d requested. All of them, with scrupulous exactness, from the date and number of the child-support order to the dates of Frank’s checks that had come late to those of the checks that should have come but never had.

“Well, well,” Herschel Falk said when she finished, and then again, a moment later: “Well, well. You certainly have all that at your fingertips, don’t you, Ms. Gunther-Perrin? I wish everyone who called here were so well prepared.”

“I’m an attorney,” Nicole said with a hint of tightness. Her teeth had clenched while she ran through the list of Frank’s delinquencies. She couldn’t seem to pry them loose.

“I see.” Falk sounded like a man who’d heard everything at least once, and most things a lot more often than that. “Now you’ve had it up to here with your ex, and you’re going to hit him up for everything you have coming to you.”

“Mr. Falk,” Nicole said, “that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Let me give you Frank’s — Frank Perrin’s — work and home telephone numbers, too, while I’m at it.”

She heard the scratch of pen on paper as she read them off. Then he said, “If I don’t get him, I will leave a message at both those numbers this afternoon. Let me put the figures into the computer, so I can tell him how much he owes to the penny. There’s ten percent interest on delinquent payments, you know.”

“Now that I had forgotten,” Nicole said with a grin Frank would not have been happy to see. “I’m in corporate law, and I really thought he would keep up after we divorced. I didn’t pay as much attention to the regulations as I should have.”

“That happens,” Herschel Falk said with every evidence of sympathy, and a degree of relish that she took note of. This was a man who enjoyed his job. Not a nice man, oh no, but a very good man to have on her side. “We’ll take care of it from here,” he said. “Some people find a call from the District Attorney’s office amazingly — mm, maybe therapeutic is the word I’m looking for. It doesn’t work on everyone, but it does for a good many.”

“I thought that might be the case,” Nicole said. “Frank wouldn’t even think of holding up a bank, and God forbid he should walk off with a wallet someone dropped on the sidewalk in front of him, but when it comes to stiffing me — well, that’s not really a bad thing, is it? I’ve got my job, after all. It’s not like I’m starving. And it’s so difficult to come up with the money some weeks, what with the trips to Cancun and the payments on the Acura. And it really gets inconvenient, you know?”

Herschel Falk laughed shortly. “Believe me, Ms. Gunther-Perrin, I do know. And we’ll do our best to teach him that one doesn’t just obey some of the laws some of the time.” He added dryly, “And, of course, we’ll do it for nothing: your tax dollars at work. Quite a bit less of a bite than your own attorney’s two hundred dollars an hour.”

“Two-fifty,” Nicole said. “Yes, that does enter into it. Ironic, isn’t it? If he’d been paying up, I’d be able to afford the fees.”

“Life’s little ironies, yes,” Falk said. “All right, then. I’ll call and see what Mr. Perrin has to say for himself. If he doesn’t dispute the facts, we’ll go from there. If he does… well, we’ll see. May I have your number, please, so that I can reach you when I have something to report?”

Nicole gave him her office and home numbers. “I don’t think Frank will dispute the facts,” she said. “He’s in computer science — he knows what’s real and what isn’t. Sometimes he just does his best to ignore it.”

“Maybe this call will do some good, then,” Falk said in a neutral tone. “We can but hope. Good day, Ms. Gunther-Perrin.”

“Good day,” Nicole said, and fought an urge to giggle. His slightly old-fashioned style had infected her. It was appealing, really. Even though, as a confirmed governmental cynic, she wasn’t sure he really would do as he promised, or do it in any kind of timely fashion, she still felt good about the call. Finally she was doing something about a long and frustrating problem.

She went back to her analysis with a lighter heart, and a sense that she should have done this a long time ago. There were legal mechanisms in place here, and they would work in her favor, even if they took a while. She wouldn’t have to beard an Emperor in his den, and then rely on his goodwill, to get what was rightfully hers.

The calls from well-wishers had tapered off, but they still kept coming. Her patience was wearing thin by the time Frank added himself to the list. Obviously he hadn’t heard from Herschel Falk, or he’d have been screaming in her ear. The good Mr. Falk must have been operating in lawyer time when he promised to call this afternoon. No doubt he meant some afternoon this week, or possibly some afternoon this month.

Then, at about a quarter to four, Cyndi rang in to report, “I have your ex-husband on the line, Ms. Gunther-Perrin.” Her tone had a slight hint of question, and an edge of warning.

Nicole smiled and shoved the environmental impact report to one side. “Really? Good, then, I’ll talk with him.” She waited for the small click that meant the secretary had transferred the incoming call, then spoke in her sweetest, most reasonable tones: “Hello, Frank.”

“Nicole!” Frank sounded neither sweet nor reasonable. “What the hell are you doing? I just got off the phone with this crazy bastard from the DA’s office, and he says — “

“What am I doing?” Nicole broke in. “I’m doing what I’m legally entitled to do, and what I should have done the first time you missed a payment. You’re violating a court order, Frank. It’s just as much against the law as knocking over a liquor store.”

“Oh, give me a break,” her ex snarled.

“I’ve given you too many breaks already,” Nicole snapped. “So many breaks that I’m broke. I need the money you owe me. If you pay up, Mr. Falk goes away. If you don’t, he goes after your assets. I can tell him — I will tell him — where a lot of those are, and I’m sure he can find any I’m not aware of. People in the District Attorney’s office have all sorts of interesting connections, and their software is getting better all the time.”