It wasn’t hard to find someone if you knew who you were looking for, but what if you didn’t know? I stared at the counter, waiting for a bolt of lightning or a Saint Paul moment knocking me off my stool and revealing what I should do next. Eventually it came but not from the sky or a religious epiphany. As if coming out of a trance, I heard Babe’s voice, first faint, and then louder.
“Hello, are you listening to me?” Babe said. “There aren’t any answers in that mug.”
No, there weren’t, but there may have been one under it. On the place mat, next to the two-inch ads for unpainted furniture, pictures of pets plastered on T-shirts, and gold-tone trophies for your bowling team was a small ad that read “Think the Rat Is Cheating? Call Nina Mazzo, reasonable rates, discretion guaranteed. Free consultation.”
Thirteen
With enough time and money you could find almost anyone. You could also trace any call, e-mail, or Web site visit, but I didn’t have to make it easy for Nina Mazzo to discover my identity and to figure out what I was doing. If the tipster could be anonymous, I could be anonymous too. I didn’t need to burnish my reputation as a snoop. The next morning, I drove to the main branch of the Springfield library and logged on to one of their public computers to check out Nina’s Web site without leaving a trail from my home computer. Her home page was a basic template, turquoise and gold, not a lot of bells and whistles. More tasteful than I expected, given her stock in trade. It fit with her credentials as a nonpracticing attorney and former child advocate.
Nina’s specialty was tracking down deadbeat dads and getting the goods on spouses who strayed, whatever the goods were. I could only assume she, or one of her employees, was the one who stood in the bushes snapping pictures of couples in flagrante delicto while guys in designer suits made the real money from the subsequent divorce settlements. Like most things, there was a pecking order in the adultery business.
Two or three high-profile attorneys, including Arthur Horowitz, known in some circles as the first wives’ best friend, had provided enthusiastic blurbs that Nina had blatantly incorporated into the banner on her Web site.
So why was she advertising on a place mat?
“Same reason we’re here,” she said in a throaty voice, spreading her arms. She sat opposite me in an overheated barracks-like building not far from the Metro North station. I’d had some trouble finding the place, tucked in as it was between a ceramic tile showroom and a beauty supply distributor. There were two molded plastic chairs, an oversized turquoise desk clearly purchased for a larger office, and the same basic wall clock that you’d see in any hospital or prison.
“Business is off,” she said. “Either people are staying faithful, or the still-rich guys have found better ways to cover their tracks. Alarming prospects for someone like me.”
Whatever the reason, it had Nina spending, in her own words, far too much time chasing down the imaginary bank accounts and safe deposit boxes of someone’s recently deceased granny.
“Half the county seems convinced the old dears socked something away and forgot where they put it, like that women who stashed all her savings in a mattress and then got Alzheimer’s and gave it to Goodwill. Don’t get me wrong-a client is a client.” She cut off her diatribe, her famous discretion finally kicking in.
I unzipped my jacket and unwound the scarf that that been wrapped two or three times around my neck. I swiped at my forehead with the back of my hand.
“I know. I keep it warm in here. I detest the cold. So what can I do for you? It isn’t Grandma’s jewels, is it? No, you don’t have that desperate hoping-for-a-pot-of-gold expression.” She searched my face. “You may actually be worried about something, Miss…” She glanced at the online registration form I had filled out and submitted from the library’s computer.
“Miss Turner, Miss T. Turner?”
All right, I’d been having a musical moment and hadn’t wanted to type in my real name on the online form. I smiled weakly. She looked at me as if she thought I was going to say I was searching for the rest of the Ikettes.
“That’s right,” I said, rearranging my scarf and my thoughts, “Thelma.” It was the only T name I could think of on short notice, other than Tina or Trixie-and I didn’t think I could pull that one off without pretending that I had a husband named Ed and we lived next door to the Kramdens. “My mother was very old-fashioned.” I rambled on stupidly about the name.
Nina Mazzo unstrapped her plain, tanklike watch and put it on the desk in front of her. I got the message.
“I want to find someone,” I said at last.
“Now we’re getting somewhere. Who?” she asked, sitting up straighter and poised to write on her yellow legal pad. “The father who abandoned you? Child you gave up for adoption? We have a very good success rate with cases of that nature.”
“No,” I said.
“Someone you need to subpoena? I have an extremely reliable operative who makes deliveries. Very high percentage there as well.”
I was encouraged that she had had so much experience.
“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know his name, what he looks like, or if he’s even a he.”
She put her pen down. The rest of the meeting went like a riff on the old Abbott and Costello routine “Who’s on First.” I was being intentionally vague, and she wasn’t inclined to reveal any of her methods. Why should she until I was a paying customer? She was deciding how much more time to waste on me when a young man as blank and unformed looking as a Secret Service man entered the office.
She said nothing, he nodded, and she buzzed him into a back office. “One of my operatives,” she explained. It was all very James Bond. I started to think that I had wasted both of our time. “Now back to you.”
After fifteen minutes of circular chat I decided to forgo the rest of my free (you do get what you pay for) consultation and let Nina Mazzo get back to searching for Grandma’s hidden millions. She wasn’t sorry to see me go, but I felt her eyes on me all the way out to the parking lot, where I had to wait for a forklift full of Italian tile to crawl by before I could drive off.
All I’d learned was that without a name, driver’s license, or description it was difficult to know where to start looking for someone. Most of Nina Mazzo’s clients were looking for the money. Quel surprise. What was I looking for?
In fact, what was I doing? I was playing with someone’s life. Someone’s hopes. I got back in my car, determined to get in touch with Grant and call the whole thing off; then I heard the echo of Grant’s voice telling me how much Caroline trusted me and needed me. Me. I hadn’t been needed for anything other than the perennial beds for a long time. And whether I liked to admit it or not, sometimes even they did just fine without me.
If it hadn’t been for Caroline, Dirty Business might have gone under. Our friendship had sneaked up on me when I wasn’t paying attention, like those extra five pounds or a bad habit that you don’t even realize you’re engaging in until you see yourself doing it in a reflection or a photograph. It hadn’t been easy striking off on my own. If I admitted it, I would have been lonely in Springfield without her and Babe.
I left the downtown decorating area and took the back roads home to my place, past my new favorite nursery, the pond, and the school where I voted. Not far from the school, I got trapped behind a school bus that had its hydraulic stop sign sticking out. A seemingly endless stream of children exited the bus and the driver waited for each of them to waddle off in their colorful puffy jackets and disappear into their homes.
I put the car in park and sat there thinking. If I couldn’t look for a who, maybe I should be looking for a why that would lead me to a who. And maybe it wasn’t cherchez la femme as much as it was cherchez d’argent. Perhaps I had learned something from Nina Mazzo. I called the Sturgis home. Grant answered on the first ring.