27
The minute she was out the door, I grabbed my jacket and shoulder bag and trotted over to the courthouse, where I entered a side door and climbed the wide red-tile steps to the corridor above. Arches in the stairwell were open to the chill winter air and my footsteps echoed against the mosaic tile walls. I went into the county clerk’s office and filled out a form, requesting the file on Augustus Vronsky. I’d been in the same place seven weeks previously, doing the background check on Solana Rojas. Clearly, I’d screwed that up, but I wasn’t sure how. I sat in one of the two wooden chairs while I waited, and six minutes later I had the record in hand.
I moved to the far side of the room and sat down at a table, occupied largely by a computer. I opened the file and leafed through, though there wasn’t much to see. I was looking at a standard four-page form. A pale X had been typed into various boxes running down the page. I flipped to the end of the document, where I noted the name of the attorney representing Cristina Tasinato, a man named Dennis Altinova, with an address on Floresta. His phone and fax numbers were listed, as was an address for Cristina Tasinato. Flipping back to the first page, I started again, scanning the headings and subheadings, seeing what I already knew. Augustus Vronsky, designated the conservatee, was a resident of Santa Teresa County. Petitioner was not a creditor or debtor or agent of either. Petitioner was Solana Rojas, asking the court to appoint Cristina Tasinato as conservator for the person and estate of the conservatee. I suspected Solana was at the heart of the matter, but it was still a jolt to see her name neatly typed in the box.
Under “Character and estimated value of the property of the estate,” all the particulars were declared “Unknown,” including real property, personal property, and pensions. A box was also ticked stating that the conservatee was unable to provide for his or her personal needs for physical health, food, clothing, or shelter. Supporting facts were apparently spelled out in an attachment that was part of the Confidential Supplemental Information and Petition “on file herein.” There was no sign of the document, but that’s what the term “confidential” implies. In the paragraph below that, a box was ticked indicating that Gus Vronsky, proposed conservatee, was “substantially unable to manage his or her financial resources or resist fraud or undue influence.” Again, supporting facts were specified in the Confidential Supplemental Information, which had been filed with the petition but was unavailable as part of the public record. The signatures of the attorney, Dennis Altinova, and the conservator, Cristina Tasinato, were penned at the end. The document had been filed with the Santa Teresa Superior Court on January 19, 1988.
Also part of the file was an invoice for “Caregiver management” costs, broken down according to fees, month, and running total. For the latter half of December 1987 and the first two weeks in January 1988, the amount requested was $8,726.73. That sum was substantiated by an invoice from Senior Health Care Management, Inc. There was also an invoice submitted by the attorney for professional services as of January 15, 1988, listing dates, hourly rates, and the amount charged off to the conservatorship. The balance due him was $6,227.47. These expenses had been submitted for court approval, and just in case the routing of funds wasn’t clear, the note at the end read, “Please make checks payable to Dennis Altinova: senior attorney time, $200.00/hour; associate attorney time, $150.00/hour; paralegal time, $50.00/hour.” Between them, the newly appointed conservator and her attorney had racked up charges totaling $14,954.20. I was surprised the attorney hadn’t attached a stamped, self-addressed envelope to speed the payment along.
I marked the pages I wanted reproduced-which is to say, all of them-and returned the file to the clerk. While I waited for copies, I borrowed a phone book and looked up Dennis Altinova in the white pages. Under his office address and phone number, his home address and home phone were listed, which surprised me. I don’t expect doctors and lawyers to make personal information available to anybody smart enough to check. Apparently, Altinova wasn’t that worried about being stalked and killed by a disgruntled client. The neighborhood he lived in was pricey, but in Santa Teresa even houses in the shabby parts of town cost staggering amounts. There were no other Altinovas in evidence. I checked the listings for Rojas: many, but no Solana. I looked for the name Tasinato: none.
When the clerk called my name, I paid for the copies and tucked them in my bag.
Dennis Altinova’s office on Floresta was half a block from the courthouse. The police station was on the same street, which came to a dead end at the point where the Santa Teresa High School property picked up. In the other direction, Floresta crossed State Street, ran past the downtown, and eventually butted up against the freeway. Lawyers had staked out the area, settling in to cottages and assorted small buildings whose original tenants had moved on. Altinova was renting a small suite of offices on the top floor of a three-story building with an off-brand savings and loan at street level. If I remembered correctly, the space had once been devoted to an upholsterer’s shop.
I studied the directory in the lobby, which really amounted to little more than a walk-in pantry where you could wait for an elevator that moved with all the speed and grace of a dumbwaiter. The rents here weren’t cheap. The location was prime, though the building itself was woefully out of date. The owner probably couldn’t bear to sacrifice the time, energy, and money required to move tenants out and do a proper remodeling job.
The elevator arrived, a four-by-four cubicle that jerked and shuddered throughout my creeping ascent. This gave me time to examine safety inspection dates and speculate about how many people it would take to exceed the weight limit, which was 2,500 pounds. I figured ten guys at 250 pounds apiece, assuming you could squeeze ten guys into a contraption that size. Twenty women at 125 pounds each was out of the question.
I exited on three. The floor in the corridor was a speckled black-and-white terrazzo marble, rubble in other words, bound with white cement, white sand, and pigment, and reformed as tile. The walls were paneled in oak that was darkened by time. Oversized windows at either end of the hall let in daylight that was augmented by rafts of fluorescent tubing. The entrance doors to the offices were pebbled glass with the names of the occupants stenciled in black. I thought the effect was charming, suggestive as it was of lawyers’ and detectives’ offices in old black-and-white movies.
Altinova’s office was midway down the hall. The door opened into a modest reception area that had been modernized by the addition of a desk made of stainless steel and poured glass. The desktop was bare except for a four-line telephone console. The lighting in the room was indirect. The chairs-four of them-looked as though they’d make your butt go numb minutes after you sat down. There were no side tables, no magazines, no art, and no plants. Certain “interior designers” do shit like this and call it minimalism. What a joke. The place looked like the tenant had yet to move in.
A receptionist came through a door in the back wall marked “private.” She was a tall, cool blonde, too pretty to imagine she wasn’t banging the boss.
“May I help you?”
“I wonder if I might have a quick word with Mr. Altinova.” I thought the word “quick” struck a nice note.
“You have an appointment?”
“Actually, I don’t. I was over at the courthouse and decided I’d chance it. Is he in?”