The Sirena Quest (8 page)

Chapter Sixteen

It was Ray's idea, of course.

They'd just boarded the down elevator after their meeting with Gabe Pollack. As the doors slid shut, Ray turned to face them, eyebrows raised.

“What?” Lou asked.

“We can't see the court clerk, yet.”

“Why not?”

“We got something to do first, boys.”

“Huh?” Gordie asked. He was distracted, trying to cook up an excuse for getting out of his business lunch.

“We ain't the James Gang, yet.” Ray was grinning. “Not 'til we liberate Bronco Billy.”

On the taxi ride to Columbia Middle School on the northwest side of Chicago, Gordie and Ray worked out their scenario: Bronco Billy was under consideration for one of those MacArthur Foundation “genius” grants. They were the team of psychologists assigned to administer the personality tests required to determine his eligibility. It sounded ridiculous to Lou, but he was along for the ride—literally.

They were ushered into the principal's office. Behind a metal desk sat a corpulent man in his late fifties. The desktop was bare except for a BIC pen, a black rotary-dial telephone, and a tarnished brass nameplate announcing that the man behind the desk was Dr. Harold N. Silverfrick, Ph.D. With his bulging eyes, scraggly mustache, and sagging double chin, Silverfrick reminded Lou of an enormous catfish. His toupee was slightly askew. Judging from his sideburns, the rug was one shade darker than his real hair. His plaid sports jacket was buttoned, the ends of his shirt collars curled upward, and the thick knot of his tie was out of line.

Gordie, who had dressed for work that morning and thus was in a suit and tie, handled the introductions. He was Dr. Cohen. Dr. Gorman was the gentlemen in the khaki slacks and a green Polo shirt. Dr. Solomon was the man in faded Levi's and a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows.

Gordie gave an inspired performance, salting his
shpiel
with plenty of allusions to the Ying and Yang of American educational theory, namely, the “cognitive domain” and the “affective domain.”

“Nice job, Doc,” Ray told him as they walked up the stairs to the second floor.

They crowded by the door to Room 210 and peered through the glass. There were five long rows of desks facing the front, seven desks per row. A green-red-and-yellow donkey piñata hung from the middle of the ceiling fan. On the walls were brightly colored posters from Costa Rica, Chile, Peru, and Argentina. The blackboard was filled with Spanish words and phrases.

And there was Bronco Billy—just as skinny and pale as he'd been freshman year. He was leaning over a boy's desk in the back row, pointing out something in a workbook. He wore a short-sleeved blue dress shirt, a dark bow-tie, and pleated khaki slacks. He even had on the same style of metal-rimmed glasses—the ones that dug red trenches on both sides of his large nose.

Lou watched through the glass, smiling as Billy curled a finger around a strand of his lank brown hair. It was a gesture Lou had seen Billy do hundreds of times their freshman year—while studying calculus in the dorm room with his headphones on and bobbing his head over the textbook, while moving through the food line in the dining hall, while standing to the side during a Hampton College mixer.

Ray gestured at Bronco Billy, who had just noticed that there was a crowd at his classroom door.

“Come on,” Ray hissed, waving his arm.

Billy squinted toward the door and then straightened in surprise. He grinned and held up his hands in a helpless gesture as he looked around the classroom.

Ray signaled for him to join them.

Billy paused, and then he turned toward the class. He made an announcement. All heads looked toward the door, where the three of them had assumed serious expressions. After all, they were doctors of psychology here on official business. Billy walked to the head of the class, flipped through a few pages of a textbook, gave them an assignment, and headed for the door.

Out in the hall, he grinned and shook their hands.

“What are you guys doing here?”

“Liberating you, gringo,” Ray said. “Dr. Silverfish says you can leave when this period ends. He's sending up a substitute.”

Billy looked puzzled. “How'd you do that?”

Lou explained the MacArthur Foundation shtick.

Billy chuckled. “You told him all that?”

Ray slapped him on the back. “Trust me, Bronco, you got something to do that's more important than teaching those jarheads how to conjugate Spanish verbs.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sirena,” Lou said.

Ray gave Billy a wink. “We're on a mission, Señor.”

Gordie groaned. “No missions, Ray.”

Billy raised his eyebrows. “You guys know where she is?”

“Not yet,” Gordie said.

“But we're in the hunt,” Ray said.

The school bell rang. From inside the classroom came the sounds of textbooks closing and students getting up.

“¿Vamos, Señor Bronco?” Ray asked.

Billy hesitated.

“Come on,” Gordie said. He nodded toward Lou and Ray. “These guys have already hijacked my day. Your turn.”

Billy shrugged. “Okay.”

Bronco
, Lou repeated with a smile as Billy ducked back into the classroom to gather his stuff.

Billy had started college as William McCormick. Not Bill or Will or Willie. William was the only name he'd been called since birth, and that remained the case until parents' weekend during the fall of their freshman year. His mother and father flew in from Shaker Heights for the event. On Saturday night, they invited their son's three roommates—all sans parents that weekend—to join them for supper at the Josiah Barrett Inn. During the meal, Mrs. McCormick passed around baby photographs of William while her only son frowned at his plate.

Later that night—much, much later—on the lawn behind Barrett Inn, long after Mommy and Father had retired for the evening and shortly after downing his eighth beer, William confessed his dark secret. Even though Father expected him to join the State Department after graduation and then return to Cleveland to enter the family merchant banking business, what he really, really, really wanted to do, what he'd dreamed about since childhood, was to move to Montana to become a rodeo cowboy.

He'd passed out just moments after that confession. As they would later discover, the closest he'd come to riding the range was on his ninth birthday, when his parents took him to the Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky and bought him two rides on the Kiddy Kingdom Carousel. Nevertheless, as young William McCormick lay in a stupor on the lawn behind Barrett Inn, Ray Gorman announced that henceforth William would be known as Bronco Billy—a nickname so incongruous it stuck.

Billy emerged from the classroom with a sheepish grin, his sports jacket folded over one arm.

Ray put an arm around his shoulders as they headed down the hall. “We'll fill you in at lunch, Bronco.”

To his occasionally exasperated roommates freshman year, Billy had been the quintessence of predictability. Majored in economics, minored in political science—just like Father. Ran on the cross country team—just like Father. Started studying to take the foreign service exam that was three years into the future—just like Father, who spent two years at Foggy Bottom before being assigned to the United States Embassy in Lima. After ten years, Father retired from the service and parlayed his overseas connections into a partnership at an investment banking firm in Cleveland. That was Bronco's career path, too.

Or so it seemed. After college and two years in D.C., he received his first overseas assignment: attaché to the political section of the United States Embassy in Managua, Nicaragua.

But then Bronco Billy veered off his career path.

Literally.

And permanently.

As the four of them were walking down the front stairs of the school, Billy stopped.

Lou turned to look back at him. “What?”

Billy was grinning. “It's just great to see all you guys together.”

As they piled into Lou's van, Gordie shouted, “The James Gang is back!”

They'd named themselves after their dormitory, James Hall. Ray had been the gruff platoon leader, Gordie the manic-depressive joker, and Bronco Billy the good-natured nerd.

And just like freshman year, Lou thought, here they were dragging Bronco along. If asked, Bronco would always tag along—say, to the basement TV room on a Sunday afternoon to join the throng of freshmen watching the Celtics-Knicks game. But as the crowd grew more raucous, as more pretzels and beers were downed, as Bradley or Frazier hit one from the head of the key with less than a minute left and the New Yorkers roared and the Celtics fans cursed, you'd turn to say something to Billy…and he'd be gone. And when the game ended and you'd returned to the room with Gordie or Ray, laughing as you opened the door, there he'd be, hunched over his desk, head bobbing slowly to the beat in his headphones as he underlined a passage in his calculus textbook. And more often then not, Ray would grab his headphones, knock the books off his desk, and drag him out for another adventure.

They did it because it was their duty. As Ray explained to Lou one night on their way to the library to haul Billy out for a field trip to a reggae club in Springfield, “Think of what's waiting for that poor bastard—house in the 'burbs, mowing the lawn on Saturday, rooting for the Browns on Sunday, doing it missionary style once a week with the lights out. Hell, man, we gotta make sure Bronco puts in a little time on the dark side of the moon before that happens.”

Little did they suspect what the fates had in store for their boring roommate.

As Lou pulled away from the curb, he glanced at Billy in the rearview mirror. Despite all that had happened to him since college, he looked the same as he had on that September afternoon twenty-four years ago when Lou returned from lunch to discover his new roommate unpacking a box of
Foreign Affairs
.

It seemed almost an optical illusion. How could you go through so much and change so little? How could such upheavals inside leave no trace outside?

Lou glanced over at Ray—a man who'd weathered a pharmacopoeia of controlled substances, a violent failed stint in grad school, a wretched marriage, two years in a Telluride commune, the rigors of the Southern California cocaine trade, and other assaults on body and spirit with no visible impact beyond a few gray hairs at the temples, reading glasses in the breast pocket, and twenty-five extra pounds around the middle.

Clearly, there was some fundamental lesson here. But what it was, Lou had no clue.

Chapter Seventeen

Lou gazed at the assistant probate court clerk and tried to keep his tone unruffled. “Okay, sir, and where would the file be?”

The assistant probate clerk scratched his ample belly as he stared at Lou. “I cannot say for sure.”

“Why is that?”

The clerk had a grave expression, as if pondering the mysteries of the cosmos. “The presiding judge could have it if there's a hearing scheduled. Someone could have checked it out. Or—”

He shrugged.

“Or what?” Lou said.

The assistant probate clerk raised his eyebrows. “It could be missing.”

“Missing?” Ray said. “How can an entire goddamned probate file be missing?”

The four of them were in the Office of the Clerk of the Probate Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County, which was located on the twelfth floor of the Daley Center in the Chicago Loop.

The assistant probate court clerk—a fat, bald, middle-aged white man in a white short-sleeve shirt and dark wrinkled slacks—stifled a yawn. “It happens, gentlemen. Yes, indeed, it happens. You are now standing inside the filing area for the biggest and busiest circuit court in the entire world. The entire world, gentlemen. Literally. You've got your court files back there.” He gestured behind him toward the rows and rows of floor-to-ceiling metal filing stacks. “Tens of thousands of court files, gentlemen.”

Lou looked to where he'd gestured. There were at least a dozen clerks moving up and down those aisles, most pushing metal carts filled with files. Occasionally, one would stop along the way to remove a file from the stacks or replace a file in the stacks. It reminded Lou of the vast underground government storage facility in the final scene of
Raiders of the Lost Ark
.

The assistant probate court clerk turned back to them. “What can I say, gentlemen?” He sighed and placed his hands on the waist-high counter that separated the clerks and their files from the public. “Sometimes a probate file goes missing.”

The clerk drummed his fingers on the counter. “Sometimes the file gets itself misplaced. Sometimes, well, gentlemen, sometimes the file gets itself stolen.”

“Stolen?” Ray shook his head. “Who would steal a court file?”

“Who, you ask?” The assistant probate court clerk gave a weary chuckle. “Well, sir, a judge cannot hear a case, cannot issue a ruling on the merits, cannot even enter a continuance, without the file. Alas, lawyers are aware of that.” He turned to Lou. “Am I correct, counselor?”

If this guy were a steer, Lou thought, he'd have the word PATRONAGE branded on his hip.

“Let us conjure the following scenario,” the assistant probate clerk said, pausing to purse his lips. “A particular member of the bar is not quite ready for the trial call but he fears that the judge will refuse to grant him yet another request for continuance. What to do, eh? How to deal with this conundrum? As I say, sometimes the court file gets itself lost. Around here—”

He paused to chuckle.

“—around here, we call that a five-fingered continuance.”

“I can't fucking believe this,” Ray said.

Lou asked the clerk, “Do you suggest we start by checking the probate judge's clerk to see if she has the Marshall file?”

The assistant probate court clerk nodded solemnly, ignoring Ray's outburst. “That would be a prudent first step, counselor.”

Thirty minutes later they were back in the Office of the Clerk of the Probate Division. This time the assistant probate court clerk they drew was a fat middle-aged black woman with reading glasses that hung from her neck on a gold chain that rested on an ample bosom.

“Where else could it be?” Lou asked her.

She raised her eyebrows and glanced to her right. “I suppose it could be in the refile bin, honey. We're just a little behind.”

They leaned over the counter to see where the clerk had glanced. At the far end of the room behind the counter was a large canvas bin filled to the top with court files. Dozens and dozens of court files, piled helter-skelter.

“When will those be refiled?” Gordie asked.

She shook her head. “We been real busy down here since March, honey. We might get to them, oh, maybe next month.”

“Next month?” Ray repeated, incredulous.

She shrugged. “This is Cook County, child.”

Lou asked her to wait a second while he walked the other three over to one of the reading tables. Then he went back to her. After ten minutes of good-natured wheedling, she agreed to look through the refile bin for the probate court file in
In re Estate of Graham Anderson Marshall III
.

They waited at a table while she sorted through the files.

“Look at
that
dude.” Gordie nodded toward a clerk who was approaching the counter carrying a court file.

He was a skinny white guy in a fat brown tie and a wrinkled beige short-sleeve shirt that was at least two sizes too large and ballooned over his black pants, which were belted so high on his waist that his hips looked like they were fused to his rib cage. They watched as he handed the file across the counter to an attorney.

“Keep your eye on him,” Gordie said.

The skinny clerk moved deliberately, almost mechanically, down the counter toward a manual pencil sharpener bolted to the wall at the end. He was still holding the slip of paper with the court file number. Slowly, carefully, he crumpled the slip of paper, pressed it against the pencil sharpener and cranked the handle several times. Then he stuffed the wad into his bulging shirt pocket.

“I've been watching him,” Gordie said. “He does that every time.”

Ray said, “No doubt he's a blood relative of a precinct captain. It's a fucking halfway house in here.”

The female clerk returned to the counter with a big smile.

“Look what I found,” she said, holding two thick brown accordion file jackets.

Lou went up to the counter and handed her the check-out card.

“Thanks,” he said.

“You're welcome, honey.” She handed him the two file jackets.

He started to turn and paused. “Do you know who last checked these out?”

“Hmmm, let me see.” She reached across the counter and ran her finger down an index card stapled to the side of one of the file jackets. She tilted her head to read the information.

“That was just four days ago,” she said, more to herself. “I'll go look it up.”

Lou returned to the table and handed one of the file jackets to Billy and sat down with the other. Gordie moved next to Billy, and Ray slid his chair alongside Lou.

“There'll be lots of court documents,” Lou explained. “Ignore them. Look for Marshall's papers—his will, any codicils, letters from him, instructions for his executor, references to other estate planning documents. Stuff before he died.”

Twenty minutes later, Ray whistled softly and held up a legal-sized document. “This is some weird shit.”

“What's that?” Lou asked.

Ray flipped back to the cover page. “Codicil A to the Last Will and Testament of Graham Anderson Marshall.”

“What about it?” Lou asked.

“It sets up a trust fund—a forty-thousand-dollar trust fund—for the care and maintenance of—you ready for this?—a grave at a pet cemetery.”

“Whoa,” Gordie said. “What's the pet's name?”

“Canaan.”

“Who?” Bronco Billy asked.

Ray gestured at the document and shrugged. “Canaan.”

“A pet cemetery?” Gordie reached for the codicil. “The guy set up a trust fund for a pet's grave?”

Gordie studied the document.

“Canaan could be a cover,” Lou said.

Fifteen minutes later Billy leaned back in his chair. “I think I found her.”

The other three looked up from their documents. Billy was holding a legal-sized document about thirty pages long.

“Her?” Lou asked softly.

Billy smiled. “Has to be.”

They all leaned forward.

Billy placed the document on the table. “His Last Will and Testament.”

He waited as an attorney passed by their table toward the copy machine. Then he opened the document to a page in the middle.

“Article Fifteen.” He looked down at the page. “Here. It's in his bequest to Barrett College.”

“Read it,” Ray said.

Billy looked around to make sure no one else was paying attention. He leaned forward, his voice low. “It says he gives, devises, bequeaths, et cetera the sum of three hundred thousand dollars—quote—‘to Barrett College, whose most captivating and captivated first lady now resides where the sultan pointed on October first'—close quote.”

They were silent for a moment.

“Damn,” Ray finally said, “that's her.”

“Read that again,” Lou said.

Billy did, slowly.

Ray was beaming. “We found her, boys.”

“We did?” Gordie asked.

“Of course.”

“Where is she?” Gordie asked.

“Wherever that fucking sultan pointed,” Ray said.

“Okay,” Gordie said. “And where exactly would that be?”

Ray gave him an annoyed look. “We'll find out.”

“Which sultan?” Billy asked.

“We'll find that out, too,” Ray said.

“How?” Gordie said.

Ray leaned back in his chair with a frown. “We'll figure something out.”

“It shouldn't be that hard.” Lou lowered his voice. “She disappeared in June of 1959. What's the date on Marshall's will?”

Billy flipped to the last page. “The sixth of October, 1984.”

Lou did the calculation. “That means there are…twenty-six October firsts between the time Sirena disappeared and the date of his will. Whoever this sultan is, he must have been famous enough—or the place he pointed to must have been famous enough—to get reported in the newspaper.”

“Why do you say that?” Billy asked.

Lou said, “Remember what Gabe Pollack told us? Marshall would want to make sure that he got credit for hiding the statue. What's the best way to do that? By telling people where he hid it.” Lou pointed at the will. “This is Marshall's evidence. That's why there has to be a newspaper article about that sultan.”

Billy looked confused. “Why?”

“Because,” Lou said, “if there's no public record of the event, it becomes an impossible clue. If you can't solve the clue, Marshall doesn't prove that he was the one who hid her.”

Gordie nodded. “So we need to check the newspapers for each October first from 1959 to 1982.”

“Actually,” Lou said, “we want the October second issues. “If our sultan pointed on October first, it wouldn't appear in the newspaper until the following day.”

Ray stood up. “Then let's get over to the library.”

“Sir? Excuse me?”

Lou turned. It was the assistant clerk who had found the file for them. She was holding up a filing card. Lou walked over to the counter.

“Here's that check-out list for the Marshall file.” She scanned both sides. “Mostly Chicago lawyers. And here—” she pointed to a name “—this gentlemen writes for the
Sun-Times
.”

“When was that?” Lou asked.

“That was almost three years ago. No one's asked for the file since then, until four days ago. And then you today.”

“Who asked for it four days ago?”

She squinted at the card. “Har…no, Henry…Wash, uh—”

“Washburn?”

“That's it. Henry Washburn.”

Lou groaned.

Ray groaned. “Shit.”

“It could be anyone,” Gordie said.

Ray turned to Gordie, his face grim. “It's them,” he said.

“Who?” Billy asked.

“Frank and Reggie,” Lou said.

Billy's eyes widened. “Frank and Reggie? How do you know?”

Ray said, “They were at the nursing home in St. Louis. They saw his sister. They probably read the same damn letter. That means we're not the only ones who know Marshall hid her.” He banged his fist against his thigh. “Fucking preppies.”

“Come on, then,” Gordie said. “Let's get over to the library and find the article.”