UGLY MONEY

Philip Loraine

COPYRIGHT

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 1996 by Collins Crime

© Philip Loraine 1996

Philip Loraine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Photoset by Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd

Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

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UGLY MONEY

Writer Will Adams’ peaceful life is interrupted by the sudden and not entirely welcome arrival on his doorstep of his young niece, Marisa, and her best friend Nick. Marisa has learned from her parents, film director Jack Adams and his actress wife, Ruth, that Jack is not her real father and she is determined to find the man who is. Reluctantly Will agrees to help her but a shock awaits him: it looks as if Marisa’s biological father is Scott Hartman, a fabulously wealthy recluse who has not been seen for years.

A near fatal accident, a false arrest, hostility from Hartman’s associate … it is becoming clear that someone wants to prevent Marisa from meeting her father. The stakes are raised still further when, through her mother, Hartman is actually tracked down and is confronted with his daughter. A bitter man, with a life of regret behind him, he decides to change his will in Marisa’s favour – a move that is to unleash a wave of violence that threatens to engulf not just Marisa, but her family.

Ugly Money is an unputdownable story of intrigue, jealousy and murder which will have the reader gripped from beginning to end.

DEDICATION

Take note, take note, O World,

To be direct and honest is not safe.

Othello

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One: Marisa

Chapter Two: Ruth

Chapter Three: Scott

Chapter Four: Hawk Rock

Chapter Five: Cross-Eye

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About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE
Marisa

1

I heard the other day about a man who was having breakfast, reading the paper and minding his own business, when a bulldozer came crashing through the wall of his house. Imagine it: as the plaster dust clears, there you are looking at this gigantic piece of machinery where your nice new kitchen used to be. Presently the driver will explain that he put the thing into Reverse when he meant Drive. It’s known as Chance.

Chance pitched me headlong into this story. In my case the bulldozer was my seventeen-year-old niece, Marisa, but that makes no difference at all; an attractive and determined teenage girl can cause as much damage as any mere bulldozer. I had just reached chapter nine, which means the book was half written, and research had taken a whole year. I’m a writer, yes. My name is Will Adams, though I don’t always write under it. I’m forty-three years old. I have survived marriage and the growing up of a son and daughter; I’ve survived divorce, which is only painful when enmity is involved – my ex-wife and I are the best of friends as long as we’re not cohabiting – and, in the past week, I’ve also survived death by murder.

I am … I was, until the arrival of my niece, writing a novel set in and around the small town of Astoria, Oregon, a dozen miles from the mouth of the Columbia River, and that’s why I was living there at the time in question. It’s a quiet and pleasant place, its hills decorated with wonderful, sometimes comical, wooden houses built during the Victorian and Edwardian eras, and now fashionable in our age of ‘nostalgia’: anything to escape from the mess we’ve made of the present day.

Astoria has never been very important, despite the wishes of successive city fathers; its wealth lay in timber and salmon, two commodities once believed to be in endless supply – we’ve learned otherwise. As ‘the oldest settlement west of the Rockies’, it was a lure for Scandinavian and Finnish fisher-folk; the wives worked in the canneries, and most of their names live on: Astorians don’t rush to and fro very much. Their town has been dwindling since the 1890s, and its heyday, nothing to do with timber or salmon, was in World War Two when a naval base sent the population soaring. The marvelous beauty of its setting, wooded hills, distant mountains, mighty river, savage Pacific, has remained fairly constant in spite of creeping real estate and brutal logging: a pleasant if unexciting place to live. Into this Eden, and smack into chapter nine, came Eve with a whole basketful of serpents. It started on a stormy Monday afternoon at the beginning of September, and when we get storms up here they don’t mess around: perfect weather for writing. Indeed, when the doorbell rang I had just written, ‘Chapter Nine. Lewis returned to the mouth of the Columbia in November 1927. He said he was tired of traveling and had come home for a rest, but nobody in Astoria or Ilwaco believed him; they knew he’d come back because of the gold …’

Cursing, I abandoned my desk and opened the door on this stunning blonde with dark blue eyes. She appeared to be in her early twenties, and it took me a moment or two to realize I was looking at my brother’s child Marisa, aged seventeen. I said, ‘Hi, Marisa, come on in.’ Quite a smooth reaction, all things considered, you might even say cool. If you’re not cool they have this habit of walking right over your fallen body and writing you off, politely but decisively.

I’m not being wise after the event; right there and then a small stinging shock jumped from this girl to me: nervousness, even fear, sparked around her like an electrical field. She was hiding it pretty well but it was unmistakable, and it set me tingling, ready for anything. Anything? Well, that’s what I thought. She had grown since I’d last seen her, hardly surprising at that age; she now had her mother’s height, and with it that negligent grace tall women have to cultivate if they’re not going to appear gawky. As yet she was too young to get the negligent grace quite right, so there was still a touch of gawkiness which was touching. I said, ‘What brings you to the Great Pacific Northwest?’

She shrugged. ‘I guess the Great Pacific Southwest finally got me down.’ Yes, she was all nervous tension, thrumming with it. I indicated the sofa, and sat in an armchair facing her. I was thinking that Labor Day had just passed; at any minute, if not right now, girls of this age should be going back to school for those all-important final semesters. After Labor Day the beaches and forests fall silent again; no sound but the sigh of plastic waste, indestructible tons of it, blown by the winds of autumn.

She was looking around my apartment. ‘Nice.’

It’s the top floor of one of those Victorian houses, expertly updated and pleasantly furnished with comfortable and not incongruous things; it has a wondrous view across the Columbia to the hills of Washington State on the far side: four miles away, it’s a big river. But when youngsters say ‘nice’ you can be pretty sure it’s not just politeness; she probably meant ‘big’ – it does have three bedrooms. So I was ready when she added, ‘We stopped over in Medford last night – why can’t I ever fall asleep in motels?’

Obviously this was my cue to say, ‘Do you want to stay here? Who’s we?’

‘He’s a darling, you’ll love him.’

‘I only have one spare bed, the other room’s strictly junk.’

‘We can share a bed.’

‘Not in my house, you can’t, your parents would kill me.’

She laughed. ‘Nick’s gay, we often share beds.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Parking the car.’ This was some kind of evasion – it doesn’t take that long to park in Astoria: an evasion and part of her nervousness.

‘He’s A-OK. Really. HIV negative, everything.’ And then, a schoolgirl: ‘Actually he’s my best friend.’ There are times when you can’t help loving them, even when they’re conning you. And I must say it was nice just looking at her; she wore her naturally fair hair in a longish bob, so that it fell over one eye and had to be removed from time to time; I also noticed that she’d taken the trouble to use a little cologne, a little lipstick and powder, before bearding uncle in his den.

It seemed high time I asked after her parents.

‘They’re OK, I guess. He’s going to direct that Revisions thing.’ She was talking about Revisions of Life, bestseller, bad like most of them, much admired, much touted as the movie of next year. I said, ‘Good for him. Probably get himself another Oscar.’

‘Rob Railton’s playing the lead. They went to this dinner party and it threw them ass-wise, everybody screaming about the Railtons and their adopted baby – hear about that?’

‘Kind of.’ Robert Railton was the current hunk actor, drooled over by women and teenagers. His wife couldn’t conceive, or so they said; others were of the opinion that he couldn’t sire, but you don’t air that kind of opinion about the current hunk.

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘this dinner party went berserk because they’d been on some talk show, Robert and Grace, and the guy asked when were they going to tell the boy he was adopted. I mean, Jeeze! He’s only like eighteen months old.’

‘Talk-show hosts aren’t paid to think.’

‘They both said never, and that’s what started the big argument over dinner. People saying the kid had to be told some time, others saying of course not. And then a lot of crap about what age do you tell him – like sixteen with the driver’s license or is that too late?’ The deep blue eyes found mine. ‘Well, the fat was in the fire, know what I mean?’

I didn’t, but kept quiet.

‘They took me out next night. Vince’s. It’s my favorite place – they hate it, so I … kind of wondered.’ She put both elbows on her knees and both fists under her jaw, and the hair fell forward, hiding her face. ‘Did you know?’

‘Did I know what?’

‘He isn’t my father.’

‘Say that again.’

She sighed. ‘Your brother isn’t my father. They took me to Vince’s to tell me. I guess they thought it would be easier than just the three of us sitting around a table at home. It’s been worrying them for years.’ A woeful grimace. ‘Seventeen years, wouldn’t you know.’

I said, ‘Jesus Christ! Marisa, are you sure?’

‘Sure I’m sure, they told me right there over the eggs Benedict.’ She jumped up from the sofa and went to the window. ‘Why couldn’t they keep quiet? Why did they have to go to that stupid dinner party?’

Myself, I felt it made no difference whether she was my brother’s child or not: he loved her, he’d loved her all her life. But I wasn’t seventeen years old, and I wasn’t the child in question. Naturally I imagined that this revelation was the cause of her desperate uneasiness. I’m afraid I was being simplistic; we were in what you might call a multi-layered situation. She said, ‘It’s OK, I’m not going to bawl. I did all that.’

‘When did they tell you, Marisa?’

‘Thursday.’

Thursday, four days ago. ‘Have you been away from home five days?’

She was staring out at where the view would have been if it hadn’t been obscured by driving rain and an early cloud-sodden twilight. She shook her head. ‘No. I stuck around till yesterday morning; I guess I was in shock. And Dad … Jack was so sweet, like he always is. He tried … tried to explain how they felt, but who wants explanations?’ She swung around to face me again, and even if she’d already done the bawling, tears weren’t far away. ‘Oh God, I know he loves me, I know they both do, so why the hell couldn’t they both keep their mouths shut?’

I understood her anger and her emotion, but plain old adult practicality made me ask, ‘Marisa, do they know where you are?’

‘No. And you mustn’t tell them. Don’t look like that, Will – please, please don’t tell them I’m here.’

‘They’ll be worried sick.’

‘That makes three of us.’ A flash of rebellion. Obviously prevarication was called for: ‘OK, I won’t tell them right now – which is what I ought to do.’

‘Not ever.’ She sounded like herself at eleven. It’s a strange age, seventeen, balanced on the seesaw of growing up.

I said, ‘You know that’s not fair.’

‘Was telling me fair?’

‘I don’t know. It was honest.’

‘Oh, honest … shit! Anyone can be honest, it’s so damn easy, and it’s a killer.’

Back went the seesaw. Where did she get that kind of knowledge? Honesty as killer – and in my experience it often is.

She turned away from the window which the wind was trying to turn inside out. ‘When they told me … it was kind of weird. My mind stopped, I mean it actually wouldn’t go forward and it wouldn’t go back.’

‘Like a clogged drain.’

‘Exactly. And then … I guess somebody poured in the Drano, and I began to think again, I saw what I had to do. I must know, Will, I must find out.’

That was understandable. Knowing probably wouldn’t matter much in the end, could be dismissed; not knowing mattered like hell and could never be dismissed. So that was why she had appeared out of the storm on my doorstep, and in a jangling state of nerves.

‘Just … Oh, just meet him. Once. Kind of … feel his genes in me, know what I mean?’

Yes. Difficult enough when you’re young to discover who and what you are without a great mystery, a black hole, hanging over your head. ‘And you think you’ll find him up here?’

‘I know it. I haven’t just sat around since Thursday, I’ve been Sherlocking.’

The doorbell rang. ‘Nick. I’ll get it.’ I thought she’d reacted a little too quickly, but put it down to her taut nerves; so I wasn’t prepared for her to step outside and close the door on me. I could hear the murmur of voices from the hall and wondered just what they were up to.

Suddenly I was feeling very sorry for my brother Jack. Sorry for Ruth too, of course, but somehow it seemed worse for him. We’re not close, we never have been: not even when we first came to the US together some twenty years ago, aged twenty-six and twenty-three respectively: the Adams brothers. It sounds like a singing duo or an ancient vaudeville act; actually we were a British director/writer team; we’d done pretty well in Europe but, like most young men, had our eyes fixed on the big time, i.e. Hollywood …

The front door opened again, the conference was over. Ushering him in she said, ‘This is Nick Deering. Nick, my … my not-uncle, Will Adams.’ And, quickly: ‘He says we can stay here.’

We all grew out of the stereotyped image long ago; well, not all now I come to think of it; there are still a lot of brutish old dinosaurs clumping around. Her best, and gay, friend was a big burly boy, your Sixth Grade, high-school football boy, with a dry, strong handshake. He wasn’t handsome, but there’s a clean young American look which does almost as well: benign brown eyes, neatly cut brown hair falling over the wide forehead in a fringe. And when he smiled the eyes smiled too, and that’s rare. But, I realized at once, he too was in a state of extreme nervous tension. Trying to rise above it he said, ‘Hi. Get the story?’

‘Some of it.’

‘Ballbreaker, ain’t it? You’re not going to call your brother?’

‘Not yet anyway.’ Carefully, I added, ‘Look, it may be none of my business, in which case you’ll tell me so – but why are you both jumping like junkies in need of a fix?’

They glanced at each other. Marisa said, ‘No reason really. I mean … it’s no big deal.’

Her best friend shook his head. ‘For Pete’s sake, we need help, why mess around? And what do you mean, no big deal? Someone tried to run us off the road, could’ve killed us.’

‘He was just smashed, he was nothing to do with it.’

Nick sighed. ‘Like I know I’m seventeen and you don’t, that’s the problem.’

She gave him a sweet smile. I could see she’d been telling the exact truth – her best friend; she could certainly have done worse. ‘You’re probably right, you usually are.’

‘So,’ I said, ‘is this where I ask, “What do you mean, ran you off the road, could have killed you?” Or do I just wait?’

Nick spread large hands. ‘We goofed.’

‘No,’ said Marisa, ‘I goofed.’ And to me, ‘It’s a long story, and it won’t make sense unless you hear it from the beginning.’

‘Then tell it from the beginning.’

‘Really?’

‘The night is young. When did you two last eat?’

‘Around noon.’

‘Right. You can talk while I cook. Fettucini OK?’

‘Marinara?’ Sophisticated Hollywood brat!

‘Sure. Clams, mussels, squid.’

‘Super!’

‘So come in the kitchen. Fix drinks. Mine’s a gin and French, and I don’t mean a Martini – half gin, half Noilly Prat, on the rocks.’

Why am I writing this story instead of going back to chapter nine as I ought? Because I resent people who try to kill me, and because it’s there – same for writers as it is for mountaineers.

Chance, the same implacable joker that motivated the bulldozer, led me by the nose off the highway and into the American wilderness. And for the benefit of my fellow-Europeans, let me add that leaving the highway in this neck of the woods doesn’t mean a stroll through the bluebells; the underbrush is full of nasty surprises like poison oak and poison ivy, a person can get hurt. Semi-human creatures also dwell there; they can cause you irreparable harm and won’t hesitate to do so if your interests, or those of your beautiful niece, conflict with theirs. They have no moral sense, money is their only morality, and you don’t beat them because they’re ten thousand times richer than you are. The law doesn’t beat them because it doesn’t want to – they can afford the best attorneys, and they give so generously to the policemen’s ball and the President’s ball and all the balls in between.

2

So while I cooked, my favorite pastime after writing and messing around in boats, and while Nick chopped garlic – an irritating job, it always sticks to the knife – Marisa perched herself on a stool at the counter and began to tell me from the beginning.

When her mind began to operate again after the initial shock and the anger that went with it, certainty swept over her like a cold Pacific wave, and she was amazed it had taken so long to come rolling in. Of course she wouldn’t be able to rest until she knew who her father was; met him, if he was still alive; rearranged her life along the guidelines which, trustingly, she felt he would show her, perhaps without knowing he was doing so. Only then, only with the peace of mind and the knowledge such a meeting would give, could she turn back to the two people she loved best in the world. It seems to me very wise of her, at seventeen, to realize that this was the way to finding and trusting them again; and she seems to have known it from the beginning: almost from the beginning, certainly from the moment the Drano had been poured into her mind, unblocking it.

As soon as she knew her mother was alone she went and asked her point-blank who her father really was. I can imagine the exact look in Ruth’s gentle greenish eyes, almost a jade green: a cool and considering look; it was turned on me often enough at the time of my divorce. Marisa has inherited her beauty from her mother and her blue eyes from her maternal grandmother, Corinne: also some of her more sassy characteristics. It’s a funny thing – this difference in eye color makes the two of them quite dissimilar; yet when you look carefully you can see Ruth’s bone structure in her daughter; and these fine bones have enabled her to keep her looks past the witching age of forty: good news for Marisa. There are lines of course, but because there’s been no surgical snipping and stretching they’re virtually unnoticeable; and a touch of gray in fair hair is always attractive; some women pay the earth to have it put there.

She said, ‘Marisa, I’m not telling you who he is.’

‘Then he’s alive.’

‘Yes. And he’s a nice person, a good person. I didn’t fall for a ski bum or a beach boy.’

‘Can’t they be nice good people too?’

‘Of course. You know what I mean.’ Was she touched by the glint of social conscience, a glint of rebellion in her child who had never given her any of the fashionable headaches, who thought drugs were strictly for dimwitted dropouts?

‘So you fell for him and you had his baby, where did … where did Jack come in?’

‘I already knew Jack. He … saved me from a very awkward situation, but that’s the kind of person he is. As you know.’

‘Why didn’t the man marry you?’

‘He was already married.’

‘You could have got rid of me.’

When Ruth gives you her straightest look you don’t doubt her word: ‘I never, never for one moment thought of abortion, I promise you that. I wanted a child.’

‘His child.’

‘My child.’

‘Darn lucky you had Dad around.’

Ruth was relieved to hear the ‘Dad’ and ignored the puerile sarcasm. Marisa knew better than to say outright, ‘I want to see him.’ In that respect, only apparent indifference could protect her, but she didn’t find indifference easy to fake. She tried, ‘Haven’t you got a picture of him?’

‘No. How would your father like that?’

‘He isn’t my father; I wish he was. I wish you hadn’t told me.’

Ruth sighed and shook her head. ‘If you knew how we’ve argued. Argued, discussed, agreed, disagreed – around and around, never-ending.’

‘But you’re glad you did it.’

‘It’s a weight off my mind; I can’t pretend it isn’t.’

‘Off your mind and onto mine. You must have thought how it would be for me.’

‘Of course we did. But isn’t the truth always better if … if it can be told?’

‘No, lies are better.’

‘Oh my dear …’ She held out her arms and Marisa let them enfold her. She intended to play this right. At the feel of those arms, which had always been there when she needed them, she felt the press of tears, but she was damned if she was going to cry in front of either of them. Tears were a form of acceptance, and she was accepting nothing.

Jack, home from another preproduction meeting, found her staring blankly out of her bedroom window. He said, ‘It doesn’t matter, my dear, please try to see it that way. We’ve always loved you and we always will. It’s just … we couldn’t bear cheating on you.’

She looked at his handsome square face, tanned and healthy, curly hair graying at forty-seven, and said it again: ‘I’d rather be cheated. Maybe it’s easier for you, it sure as hell isn’t easier for me.’

‘But it was right. In the end you’ll see that, and we’ll all be … We’ll be closer because of it.’

‘I hope so. What do I call you?’

‘Oh for God’s sake, Marisa, don’t overplay it. You call me Dad, Father, just as you always have.’ She accepted the flash of impatient anger – he didn’t suffer fools gladly; she admired that, it kept you on your toes; kept cameramen and actors, and more particularly wayward actresses, on their toes too. She could feel her love for him trapped inside her. OK, how was she going to let it out of the trap?

When he’d gone she raised her eyes and stared at the famous ‘Hollywood’ sign, deep in thought. As usual, a small group of the faithful were toiling up Griffith Park towards it, and as usual a small group of guards had gathered to send them packing – in case any of them had fire, explosives, or even suicide in mind.

Like many other younger movie people touched by success, Jack and Ruth Adams had never even considered living in Beverly Hills, but had taken to the real hills of old Hollywood where so many of the old and great names had once lived. After them came the realtors and ‘Hollywoodland’. How many of the devotees who regularly photographed one another with the sign in the background knew that this modern Mecca had been erected to advertise a housing development? And what did it matter in a town where fairy tales are all and the truth less than nothing? Lop off a last syllable and you have a myth.

So, gazing at ‘Hollywood’, Marisa wondered who would remember her mother’s past, who would know? Well, for a start there was Ruth’s own mother, Corinne. She would certainly know but, as certainly, would refuse to say; and would at once report to her daughter: ‘You’ve told her, haven’t you? Nothing else could make her ask questions like that. What a mistake – why do you never listen to me?’ Or something along those lines. Anyway she no longer lived in Los Angeles but had gone back to New York: ‘I know it may be dangerous but no more dangerous than LA, and at least it’s alive.’ She was a jaunty old girl. When you’re seventeen, sixty-six is a great age. No, Grandmother was out. Who then?

Seventeen years ago, or around then, her mother had been an actress, not, she often said, a very good one. Jack disagreed: she was good all right, but she’d never had the essential overriding ambition, and no chutzpah. Ruth invariably replied that in any case it was a matter of simple arithmetic: two show-biz careers into one family don’t go. As for ambition and chutzpah, yes she must have lacked both because she was a happy woman.

Who would have known her in those days? Adult faces flitted through Marisa’s mind, parental friends who had come and gone while she played house with Joanne under the bougainvillea on the other side of the pool – while she stood before the bedroom mirror wondering if she would ever reach sixteen. She hadn’t even been interested in the ones who had since become famous.

But wait a minute! There was a couple who came to dinner every now and again. Hadn’t they once been agents? Hadn’t names flickered around the table? ‘Whatever happened to … ?’ ‘Didn’t you handle … ?’ The kind of show-biz gossip which makes the young, if present, tune out. Sagging old faces, she could almost see them now. They must have been agents, they must have ‘handled’ Ruth Shallon, as she then was, or they wouldn’t be friends, people who came to dinner as opposed to the rabble which attended the twice-yearly free-for-all around the pool. They had a Dutch name – Van-Something. Van-What? There couldn’t be many Vs in the red book which lay beside the phone in the hall. There weren’t, and there were only two Van-Anythings. The first lived in Amsterdam, the second was VanBuren, Henry and Barbara, Sunset Palisades. Marisa knew Sunset Palisades, one of her school friends lived out there in summer: nothing to do with the Boulevard, a new development way north of Malibu, north of Zuma: big houses on ledges, cleverly concealed one from the other by means of earth moving and skillful planting. Sounded kind of retired, but you could never be sure.

Was there still a VanBuren Agency? Yes there was, but a call confirmed that Henry and Barbara had sold out long ago, to the mega-operation Dermott-MacNally; they had probably been unable or perhaps unwilling to cope with the new Hollywood, which was really the old Hollywood wearing a different hat and a funny nose. OK, definitely retired. Now, how do you approach mother’s old retired friends, almost certainly old agents, without setting off the jungle drums? You make up a story; doesn’t have to be a good one, not in Southern California where anyone will believe anything, in fact crazy is better.

She found Henry and Barbara VanBuren next day, Friday, living in a splendid modern house with its feet, or anyway its private steps, in the ocean. Like many elderly people who have led active and interesting lives at the center of the whirlpool, they were bored to find themselves placidly rotating at its lazy outer edge. They had their golf, he had his fishing, she had her weaving (beautiful things), they both had their old friends, a few of whom like Ruth Adams had once been clients. Having met them, Marisa couldn’t wait to get away from them, they depressed the hell out of her, and it was their careful politeness, eagerness to please the young in their old age, which depressed her most. Handsome, healthy, well-to-do old Californians, into their seventies with nowhere to go.

‘You see,’ she heard herself saying, ‘I had this great idea. I should have done it on her fortieth but I guess her forty-second will be just as good.’ She intended to give her mother a surprise, a real This is Your Life, wasn’t that a fabulous idea?

The VanBurens exchanged a quick glance which told her that they thought the idea less than fabulous, but they weren’t about to hurt her feelings.

‘And I wanted somebody who knew her way back when she was acting.’

Gently they explained that of course they’d known Ruth in those ancient far-off days, she’d been their client and they adored her, but they were sure Marisa wouldn’t mind if they, personally, opted out of this absolutely fantastic plan, This is Your Life, Ruth Adams. Too old, they hated to admit it – but of course they’d keep the secret, it sounded such a fun project.

Acting intense disappointment, Marisa said, ‘Well, perhaps you know someone else. Maybe some other actress, she must have had friends.’

Henry VanBuren pounced on this like a drowning sailor bumping into a floating life-saver: ‘Barbie, who was that gal who brought Ruth around to the office – when she first came to town?’

Marisa wanted to shout, ‘Where from? Tell me where she came from,’ but that would have set the drums beating all right. She sat mute. ‘You remember, dear, Julie Something. They’d just made a picture together, hadn’t they?’

‘Oh yes.’ Barbara VanBuren’s eyes congratulated him on finding this perfect escape. ‘You mean Julie Wrenn – I saw her in Hughes Market a couple of weeks ago.’ And to Marisa, benevolently, ‘An actress would be much more fun than a couple of old agents, she’d give you a real performance. And I bet your mother hasn’t seen her in years. You’re right, Henry – you clever old puss! – it was Julie Wrenn who introduced Ruth to the agency.’

Before leaving them to their boredom, from which they hadn’t even wanted to save themselves, Marisa again swore them to secrecy: it would all be spoiled if Ruth got so much as a hint of what was being planned. They stood together on their shining wraparound deck, with their expensive ocean view behind them, waving their bony, liver-spotted hands in farewell, and the breeze lifted their scanty white hair, showing the pink scalps beneath. Oh God, Marisa thought, turning back onto Pacific Coast Highway, save me from that, let me die young. Well, youngish.

She paused at this point, blue eyes inward turning on her thoughts. I noticed that she had taken something from her pocket and was holding it in one hand, touching it gently with the fingertips of the other. I said, ‘What’s that?’

She smiled, revealing a piece of green soapstone carved into a toad, the kind of thing the Chinese turn out by the million. ‘Nick gave him to me.’

Nick, drinking beer, said, ‘She’s kinky that way.’

‘I always take him with me if I’m … you know, going to do something a bit way out.’

‘Like coming a thousand miles to look for Biological Dad.’

‘Right. He brings me luck.’

Nick grimaced. ‘Didn’t bring you much luck today.’

Ignoring him she added, ‘He’s called Cross-eye.’ She leaned towards me, a child suddenly, showing me how a fault in the stone did indeed make the little creature look cross-eyed. Then she put it back in her pocket. I remembered now that when I’d seen her at intervals over the years there had usually been some kind of talisman in her life: a round stone with a hole in it, found on the beach; an old one-dollar chip from Las Vegas; things like that. Now the toad. I said, ‘OK, we can eat.’ I carried the dish of pasta to the table; Nick followed with the salad; Marisa brought up the rear with hot French bread, two loaves – I’d remembered about teenage appetites.

Pouring wine, I asked, ‘Did you find this Julie Wrenn?’

‘Did I ever!’

The lady had not been at home when Marisa first called; but she was at home on the Saturday morning, and she was every bit as dispiriting as the VanBurens but in a different way. It seems she had the kind of hangover which sticks out all around its owner like the horns of a naval mine – touch one and they explode. She lived in a shabby street off La Cienega near Olympic Boulevard; immediately led the way out of the cramped little rented house onto an equally cramped patio where dead plants drooped in their pots, long unwatered: she probably knew the living room stank of booze and a sink full of dishes waiting to be washed. The sunlight made her wince and shade her eyes. ‘Ruth Shallon’s kid, well I’ll be darned! She should never have given it up – your dad being who he is, she’d be getting roles till she dropped.’

Marisa couldn’t see the This is Your Life angle going down too well with this defeated, once-pretty, maybe even once-slim bag of lard. Impossible to believe she must be roughly the same age as her mother; the difference was heart-rending. She sat down gingerly on a rather sticky lounger. Julie Wrenn kicked off her slippers and wiggled her toes; they were far from clean.

And Marisa had been right: in such a setting This is Your Life, Ruth Adams sounded surreal, but she played it to the hilt, deducting a couple of years from her age in the process. She wasn’t sure Julie Wrenn even believed her, such pretty little excitements being so far, far outside the life to which she’d condemned herself. And the idea of her actually taking part in the mythical romp was grotesque – Marisa hastily added, ‘I mean, I’m not asking you to, you know, be in it. I just thought you could tell me someone who knew her back in her acting days. I mean she must have had agents, things like that.’

‘Batty old Barbara VanBuren. Saw her the other day in … I forget. Saw her anyway; she’s still around.’

Marisa said, ‘I’ve kind of heard of the VanBurens. Were they your agents too?’

‘Long before they were hers. I introduced her.’ A touch of … what? Pride, combativeness, sagging into indifference.

‘Of course! You made a movie together, didn’t you?’

‘She had a bit part. Local girl.’ She scratched between her sagging breasts. Marisa all but held her breath: would the oracle continue to speak? The oracle took a gulp of orange juice: ‘All I ever drink in the mornings. Want some?’ Marisa could smell the vodka from where she was sitting. No orange juice for her, she didn’t fancy using one of those smeared glasses.

‘Sure we made a movie. Small budget. Your dad’s first.’

A piece fell into place. (‘He saved me from a very awkward situation.’)

‘Can’t remember the title, something about a wagon. Total bummer. I wonder he ever got another job, let alone …’ A wave of the grubby fingers sketched the upward trajectory of Jack Adams. ‘Luck of the draw, dear, that’s what they call it. All about the pioneers coming to Oregon. Crap, arty crap. Didn’t do me a blind bit of good. I played the daughter, nice part.’

Marisa sat very still, not even daring to look at the woman. She said, ‘Oregon’s beautiful, isn’t it?’

‘Kind of quiet, but … yeah, it’s beautiful.’ Oh God, she seemed to have come to a stop. Or maybe just searching her pickled memory for names: ‘The Columbia. And that other river, what’s it called? Runs through Portland.’

Marisa felt that too many questions might seem suspicious, might dam the flow; but questions had to be asked. ‘Did you … Did you like Portland?’

‘It’s OK. Better than this asshole city ever was, even in its good days.’

A local girl. Portland, Oregon. She could hardly believe how much she’d managed to discover in so short a time. Jack Adams’ first movie had been something about a wagon, about pioneers coming to the West. An arty failure. This pathetic woman had played the daughter, and her mother, the local girl, had been given a bit part. How come? Obvious – she’d been an actress up there in Portland; sometimes she spoke about acting on the stage, but she had never done it in LA, therefore it must have been in Portland. And if the wagon movie was being made on a small budget they would have depended on local talent, would have visited the theaters to find it, had found Ruth Shallon.

And when shooting was finished she had left Oregon to come to LA – to hide her pregnancy? – just another out-of-town girl trying to make the big time; and Julie Wrenn had introduced her to the VanBuren Agency. How did things then stand between the young actress and the young director?

Sitting there in that dreadful desolate patio, Marisa realized what thin, thin ice they’d been walking on, those two loved people. As a child of Hollywood she knew very well what would have happened if the media had caught the faintest whiff of what was going on. Young actress, pregnant by another man, sets her sights on up-and-coming young director and brings it off. The fact that this not-unheard-of scenario sounded laughable when applied to Ruth and Jack made her suddenly proud of them. Perhaps, unknown to her, pride was the first step in coming to terms with the hurtful truth.

Yet even while she thought of them with pride and love, that determination still urged her on: she must talk to her true father, she must ‘feel his genes’ in her; that was her way towards the light at the end of the tunnel, the light in which she would find peace and happiness again.

But right now she knew that she had to keep Oregon in Julie Wrenn’s mind, or vodka would take over, destroying the whole chain of thought: a rusty chain, many links no doubt missing. She said, ‘Pity the movie was a bummer. But it must have been a fun location.’

The eyes which were raised to hers already had that soggy, dulled look. ‘What location? Oh … Portland.’ The regard sharpened somewhat. ‘Hooked on that, aren’t you? What are you after?’

‘I thought … thought maybe I could find a couple of Mom’s old buddies from up there. For the birthday thing.’ She could see that this detail had also been forgotten. ‘You know – like I told you …’

‘Oh sure, This is Your Life.’

‘People she hadn’t seen for years – that would really be a surprise, wouldn’t it?’

A sly glance. ‘Too much maybe.’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘Could dig up the wrong ones, couldn’t you? Old boyfriends. Your dad wouldn’t like that.’

Marisa’s heart lurched. Her mouth seemed to have dried up. She couldn’t find words to unearth this buried gold; managed, ‘Oh. I hadn’t … thought of that. How would I know?’

‘For a start, honey, you can avoid the name Hartman.’

‘Was that … a boyfriend?’

‘The boyfriend, I heard tell.’ She waved her glass, vodka and orange slurping. ‘Oh Christ, I’m being a bitch. Who knows, who cares? It was a thousand years ago; it’s her business, not mine, not yours.’

Marisa’s heart was thudding so hard that it seemed to be shaking her whole body. Hartman – it might be exactly her business. ‘Was he … ? I mean, was he a serious boyfriend?’

‘I don’t know. Rich as hell … Forget it.’ She reached for her jug of orange juice and managed to change the subject with an almost audible grinding of gears. ‘Matter of fact, your mom and I did another movie together. Down in New Mexico, what’s the place called, hell hole? Stranger in Town, good movie. Harold Gage directed …’ Marisa could see that the oracle had no intention of returning to Oregon. And she’d better get away before all kinds of random reminiscences began piling up like rush-hour traffic, the way they did at her parents’ dinner parties. But in fact New Mexico had been a small bonus – she’d been born in New Mexico: Santa Fe.

In reply to her polite thanks and goodbye, Julie Wrenn merely nodded, at the same time refilling her glass. Marisa went home, clutching her golden nugget: Hartman – the boyfriend. What next? A year ago she might have gone storming up to Portland right away, but at the ripe age of seventeen she took a shower, lay on her bed for a while, and came to the conclusion that some kind of confirmation was called for. Ruth had never mentioned the Oregon connection; this in itself was a negative confirmation – she’d hardly mention it if she had things to hide.

Marisa rolled off her bed, pulled on jeans and a T-shirt and went down the hall to the small room known as Mother’s Den. Mother was out, Marisa had checked the cars. The room was cool and pleasant, facing north. A Japanese couple were teetering at the top of the steep bank which fell away from the Adams property; they were trying to get the ‘Hollywood’ sign behind their heads before their friends took the photograph. If they weren’t careful they’d go slithering down the crumbling hillside and find themselves at the mercy of spiny yucca, all kinds of cruel thorns, maybe poison oak.

In the bottom drawer of Ruth’s desk there was a pretty red and gold book which came out of hiding in November: ‘Christmas Cards’. Only three days ago Marisa would never have dreamed of poking around among her mother’s private belongings. She thumbed through the neat pages and almost immediately stumbled over Koskela, Beth, who lived in Beaverton, an extension of Portland, Oregon; and here were Greg and Kathy Nelson of Oregon City, no less; and here also was Lina Thomassen of Eugene, Oregon. (And yes, of course, here was her one-time Uncle Will: a long list of deleted addresses, a wanderer over the face of the earth: at present roosting in Astoria, Oregon – maybe he’d be getting a visitor before very long.) She found several more Oregon addresses – no other state was so well represented; the name, Hartman, was conspicuous by its absence – not a negative omission, in Marisa’s opinion, but a positive one. So Julie Wrenn’s bibulous evidence was partly confirmed, the Oregon connection certainly existed.

What next? Next she called her friend Nick Deering, and got an earful.

Her friend Nick Deering pushed his plate away – they’d both eaten two enormous helpings of pasta – and said, ‘I’ll say she got a earful, why not?’ He was a good listener, rare at any age, even more so at seventeen, and only spoke when he had something to add, as now: ‘For God’s sake. I’d called her a hundred times, I was shit scared. I mean, this was Saturday, and on Thursday night she’d been next thing to suicidal.’

‘Thursday night seemed like another world.’

‘Great. All you had to do was tell me.’

She put a hand over his. ‘I’m sorry.’ Nick looked at me. ‘Then she calls and says she has to go up to Oregon.’

‘And he shouts Oregon as if I’d said Botswana.’

‘Sure. I thought you’d gone crazy – with school starting Monday and both of us supposed to get top grades.’

I grabbed this one: ‘Yes, what about school? I’m a dad from way back, remember? It’s been worrying me.’

Marisa nodded. ‘Worries me too.’

‘Considering what your folks pay,’ said Nick, ‘it should.’ And to me, ‘I’m good old Hollywood High, pushers’ paradise.’ He looked as if he could take it. Ruth and Jack wouldn’t even consider it for their daughter; they reckoned just growing up was a big enough problem for a girl without that; and anyway they had the money for a private education. I knew it was no time to be going on about school; I said, ‘So where are we now? Day before yesterday, right?’

Nick replied, ‘Right – Saturday evening. We started north on Sunday. Had to wait until her folks were out of the way.’

‘Brunch,’ added Marisa. ‘All that poolside crap, out at Bel Air. They weren’t surprised I wouldn’t go, I never do. So we started late and had to spend Sunday night in Medford. Hit Portland around noon today.’

‘Hit being operative,’ said Nick. ‘Or did it hit us?’

Marisa had been sure that as soon as she saw the Portland phone directory she’d find her Hartman; she was wrong. Several Hartmans, yes, but their addresses didn’t add up to being ‘rich as hell’, Julie Wrenn’s words.

Nick said, ‘Figures. Rich-as-hell people have unlisted numbers.’

They had brooded over this for a while. He was all for continuing their journey to Astoria, finding not-Uncle Will and enlisting his help; she, spurred by her ‘Sherlocking’ successes in LA, felt that a little application, a little tenacity, would still lead them to a male Hartman who was not only rich but about the right age to have been her mother’s lover seventeen years before. What age? Probably older than Ruth who had been twenty-four; maybe a man of around thirty, now around forty-seven.

It was when even Marisa had all but abandoned hope – when they were driving through downtown Portland to pick up Interstate 5 – that they both saw it, at exactly the same moment: ‘Hartman’, written house-high in aggressive steel lettering against the sky: a big new building, some twenty-five floors of it, dominating its neighbors with self-assured power. The surprise made them both laugh; Marisa said, ‘There he is, that’s him!’

They parked opposite the building – no easy task: it took a half-hour and involved four circuits of the downtown area – then walked across the street to look at it. A palatial sweep of steps led up to massive steel doors, six of them, which flashed in the sun every time anyone went in or out. Beyond the doors was an enormous atrium carpeted in acres of scarlet, and on either side of them were two ever-changing display systems which informed the world that Hartman was transportation, including airlines; was oil; was hydroelectric power; was software and timber, steel and mining, hotels and real estate. While they were staring, a group of young men in suits emerged from the place laughing and joshing; some of them went across the street to Steve’s Espresso. Marisa and Nick followed. Unsurprisingly, she never has difficulty in finding young men who are happy to talk to her. One, Adrian, natty in dark gray with a subdued tie, junior exec, personified, proved to be a mine of information. Oh God, yes, Hartman was money all right; Hartman had been money around here for a hundred and fifty years. Those goodies shown on the display were only the tip of the iceberg – OK, call it the acceptable tip – you could add anything you cared to think of and you’d probably be right.

It appeared that the existing Hartman wasn’t too interested in the source of his wealth, hardly ever put in an appearance over the road. But that was what big money was for, wasn’t it? The ultimate liberating factor. Clearly young Adrian himself couldn’t wait for the seniority which would ultimately liberate him. Right now he had to go, business was business, but (a cautious glance at Nick, twice his size) if Marisa wanted to know more they could meet some evening … Marisa hugged Nick’s arm and said she was sorry, that wouldn’t be possible. The junior exec, personified withdrew.

She said, ‘I’m going in there. I’ve a hunch we’ve hit the jackpot.’

Nick was less sure. ‘What are you going to say?’

‘Final year’s project – big business, how it works. What better place to find out than Hartman Inc.?’

He said, as he’d said many times before, ‘Marisa, think first for Christ’s sake.’

‘No. Sound, camera, action!‘

‘You have to be kidding.’

‘Watch me.’

And watch he did, as she crossed the street, stood gazing at one of the displays until a gaggle of secretaries approached the doors, then joined them and disappeared from sight. Nick knew that he tended to be overly cautious by nature, but he couldn’t ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach.

Inside the atrium, which seemed to stretch upwards to infinity, Marisa trekked across a mile of scarlet carpet until she reached the information desk. To the expertly painted lady behind it she explained this pregraduation project which was so important to her final grades: an in-depth portrait of big business doing its thing. So, nothing ventured nothing gained, she immediately thought of Hartman – why not aim for the top, right? Why not even try to get fifteen minutes with boss Hartman himself?

The painted lady gave this careful thought. The girl confronting her was no weirdo; she was educated, bright and beautiful, and she was wearing cashmere slung carelessly around her shoulders, and that meant class, beware. For a start, she replied, it wouldn’t actually be possible to see Mr Scott Hartman, he hadn’t set foot in the office for a long, long time. Of course Hartman Inc. was always very conscious of its public image …

Marisa hadn’t been aware of the arrival of a tall young man in glasses; suddenly he was at the other end of the desk – and interested. The painted lady said, ‘I’m sure Publicity would help you.’ Marisa wasn’t sure how far she should push her man-at-the-top request; but she still had a strong feeling that Mr Scott Hartman was the one she’d come all this way to find, and she wasn’t altogether sure that she wouldn’t in the end find him right here in a resplendent office on the twenty-fifth floor. It’s very easy, even if you’re not seventeen and relatively inexperienced, to imagine you’re moving events along your chosen route when, in fact, events are actually moving in a quite different direction of which you know nothing; reality seldom pays much attention to one’s wishes.

The man in glasses said, ‘Perhaps I could help.’

‘Oh, Mr Rineman, would you? This is Miss …’

‘Allison, Mary Allison.’ It seemed wise to start off with a false name.

‘Mr Harry Rineman, one of our publicity directors.’

Mr Rineman was fair and balding, with a thin bony face and sharp, pale blue eyes. Marisa noticed the eyes but, euphoric in her Sherlocking mood, didn’t pay them the attention they deserved.

‘Stay right here,’ he said, ‘while I ask a few questions.’

He returned inside ten minutes and said, ‘Great. Why don’t we go to my office, and I can make a note of the kind of things you’d like to know. A school project, I think you said.’

Yes, but Marisa was pretty sure he hadn’t been there when she’d said it. This thought induced a flash of uneasiness which the office did nothing to ameliorate; it was large, even luxurious, but it had no windows. Mr Rineman asked for particulars of her school. Marisa knew she should have expected this and worked out a story; she remembered Nick’s words of wisdom, ‘Think first for Christ’s sake.’ Now, for lack of forethought, she had to give the name of her real school.

‘Oh. In LA!’

‘Yes, my mom went there, she wanted me to follow on.’

She was saved from further improvisation by the appearance of a large young man: handsome, tanned, with greedy-looking lips and cold gray eyes – and an air of absolute authority. He said, ‘I’m told you were asking for Scott Hartman in person. Why?’ No smooth politeness here; he was to the point, and harsh with it. And why the ‘in person’, how else could she have asked for anyone by name? Feeling less sure of herself, she repeated the story of her pregraduation project; it was beginning to sound flimsy.

Authority said, ‘But why Mr Hartman?’

‘He … He seemed the biggest big businessman around.’

‘There are plenty just as big in California.’

‘Sure. But … I happened to be here, visiting.’

‘School went back this morning, and your school’s in LA.’ How did he know that, he hadn’t been in the room? The place must be wired. She began to feel very uneasy indeed, aware of the situation nose-diving out of control; she wasn’t sure how or why: naturally, because she had no idea of the real direction she’d been taking ever since she entered the building.

Greedy-lips came closer; he was overpowering – sexy, she felt that in her gut, but also violent. The gray eyes examined her as if she were a slug found among the petunias. ‘I think you’re lying, giving us a load of baloney. You’re media, aren’t you? Who do you work for?’ She usually enjoyed being thought older than her years, but not this time. ‘I don’t work for anyone, I’m nothing to do with—’

He turned from her abruptly and said, ‘Rineman, keep her here. I want to make a couple of inquiries.’

Keep her here. This was when Marisa panicked; but with the panic came the certain knowledge that she must remain cool. She said to Publicity, ‘Who’s he?’

‘I’m sure he’ll tell you himself. If he wants you to know.’ The pale blue eyes were no longer friendly; they reminded her of a school friend’s Siamese cat, an avaricious killer of mice and small birds. Why the hell did she never listen to Nick? He was so damned sensible. Obviously she had to get the hell out of here before Greedy-lips returned. But how? Mr Rineman was standing purposefully in front of the only door. Panic began to swell inside her; she felt it might at any moment escape in a high-pitched scream. And her brain wasn’t operating again. Where was the Drano?

Ever since entering this creepy office she’d been clutching Cross-eye, her soapstone toad; she was just wondering whether he was going to turn out to be a dead loss when he summoned chance to her aid. It arrived in the shape of a secretary who pushed open the door without knocking and dealt Mr Publicity Director Rineman a sharp blow on the back of his balding head. The secretary, a frantic blonde and, by the look of her, a dumbbell, launched into strenuous apology, at the same time trying not to drop the teetering tower of folders she was carrying. ‘Oh Mr Rineman, oh I’m so—’

He had stepped away from the door willy-nilly, and was now stretching out both hands to catch some of the folders as they began to spill onto the floor, scattering loose pages. Marisa darted behind the girl’s back into a corridor, into the vast atrium. Things then happened very quickly and in no recognizable order. Mr Rineman was undoubtedly shouting somewhere behind her, maybe Greedy-lips as well. A few passers-by gaped, others passed hurriedly by. The lady at Information was staring, brows raised. Marisa ran as fast as she could towards the heavy steel doors, sure that she’d find them electronically locked. Not so – they even opened for her as she approached. A man in uniform, Security, no doubt, was by then turning towards her, but she was already at the top of the steps; went leaping down them; saw a gap in the traffic and darted across the street to a fanfare of horns.

Nick had seen her and was staring open-mouthed. He flung himself into her Subaru station wagon as she reached it; a second later she was beside him and they were moving; and – oh God! – lights at the end of the block were changing to red. Looking in the mirror she saw, as Nick had evidently also seen, a couple of Hartman security men closing in on them.

Nick said, ‘Oh Christ!’ as Marisa shot the lights. More horns, a screech of burning rubber. But they’d made it.

‘Hm!’ was all I could say when she’d finished. I was thinking that none of it had been exactly clever, but on the other hand I found her devil-may-care courage rather endearing.

Nick said, ‘“Hm!” just about nails it.’

‘And after this …’ I was aware of sounding like a prosecuting attorney. ‘After this you were forced off the road.’

Marisa was sure it had nothing to do with the drama at Hartman. ‘How could it, Will? I mean, this guy suddenly appears out of left-field …’

‘Like,’ I said, ‘Mr Rineman.’

She stared at me. ‘Nobody could have picked up on us that quick.’

‘I go with Will – Mr Rineman did.’ Nick was cutting himself another chunk of French bread and buttering it. Marisa looked at it longingly. He divided it and gave her half.

‘No,’ she said. ‘The guy was smashed, he was making a pass at me, you know how they are.’

It seems that this big pick-up, towering on mountain wheels, materialized in the fast lane, swerving in towards the Subaru. ‘Honestly,’ she said, ‘it looked a mile high, I could hardly see the driver.’ A second later the pick-up had closed again, and there was a scream of metal as it sheared along the side of the station wagon. No one else paid any attention: minding their own business, the modern virtue.

Nick said, ‘Jesus it was scary, those huge tires!’

By this time Marisa’s offside wheels were scrabbling along the rough shoulder, and her car was yawing to and fro, gravel flying.

‘She was great,’ said Nick. ‘I saw the turn-off coming before she did, and I was pointing and yelling – and just as the bastard came swerving in again she wrenched the wheel over and zing, he was gone. Trapped on the freeway, see, while we shot off into Something-or-other Avenue.’

They were completely lost, but at least they were free of the maniac’s attentions. How far it was to the next turn-off was anyone’s guess, but by then he might have forgotten them, if he was indeed drunk; if on the other hand he was still interested it would take him a long time to reach the spot where they’d evaded him, whether he rejoined the freeway in the opposite direction or tried to make his way back by residential side streets. They drove off into the hinterland, found a mini-market and bought themselves a much-needed Coke. Half an hour later they returned to the freeway, via another entrance.

Once or twice during the next hour they were sure they were being followed – which was why Nick had taken so long parking when they finally reached Astoria; he wanted to make sure it had only been their imagination.

Well, I thought, there were plenty of good reasons for all that nervous tension; some kids I’d known would have been in need of first aid. I said, ‘Hartman. I wonder why they were so touchy.’

‘They thought I was a media person.’

‘OK. Why so touchy about the media? And how about the guy in the pick-up?’

‘I still don’t think he was anything to do with them.’

‘Coincidence, eh?’

Nick shook his head; clearly he didn’t believe in coincidence either. We all considered the situation in silence. Then I said, ‘What do you want to do next, Marisa?’

‘I just have this feeling he’s it, I don’t know why.’

Nick added, ‘I just have this feeling we could do with some help from not-Uncle Will.’

‘We might dream up a more subtle way of going about it.’ I smiled to blunt the sharp adult edge. ‘For a start it may be true he’s never in that office; I think we have to find out where he lives. And even if Ms Julie Wrenn was right, we’d better make sure he wasn’t just a boyfriend. He doesn’t have to be biological Dad.’

She nodded, accepting this. Nick relaxed a little; it was obviously what he’d been hoping I’d say. I could understand that being the sole curb on Marisa’s impulses might well be exhausting, particularly if you were no older than she was.

The blue eyes were very direct. ‘Are you going to help me?’

‘How, is the question. Let me think it over.’

The wind blustered and hurled buckets of Oregon rain at the windows, a cozy sound as long as you’re safe indoors. I could see that their heroic day, not to mention the thousand-mile drive preceding it, not to mention the large meal they’d just consumed, were all taking their toll; they were only managing to keep their eyes open because it would have been impolite to let them close. I suggested we make up the bed; we could talk some more in the morning, and by then I might have come up with an idea. There were no disagreements. As a matter of fact I’d already had the idea, but sudden inspiration should never be voiced until it’s been allowed to marinate for a while, preferably overnight; ideas often lead to further ideas.

Bed-making was weird and wonderful; they preferred to sleep head to toe. ‘In case,’ she said, ‘he kind of half wakes up and thinks I’m a boy.’

‘Nobody,’ replied her best friend, taking the words out of my mouth, ‘could possibly mistake you for a boy.’

Myself, I didn’t feel sleepy: too many questions weaving around in my mind, most of them requiring answers from Ruth, some from my brother Jack. What worried me most was the thought of their gnawing anxiety. Would they have put the police onto their daughter? Probably not yet, possibly not ever, even if they wanted to: there were enough wounds to be healed without that one. Did they know that she’d taken off with Nick? He was only a youngster but evidently a prudent and resourceful youngster, and that would be some comfort.

My first loyalty was to Jack and Ruth of course, and yet there was something about their daughter’s dogged independence which also demanded loyalty. I would have to tell them she was with me and safe (relatively speaking) but I could only do so after she’d agreed that it must be done: a weak decision certainly, but what in life is weaker than divided loyalty, and what more common?

Had anyone asked me earlier that evening if I loved my brother I would have replied, ‘No, not really.’ I admired him, yes, and occasionally enjoyed his company, in small doses; but sibling love has always struck me as being either a very strong emotion, or a thing you take for granted and ignore. So I was surprised to find that now, a few hours later, my answer would have been different; perhaps there’s more feeling between us than I’ve ever supposed.

The fact is he’d become remote: a noted figure occasionally seen on television, accepting some award with a witty little speech. Misfortune seemed to have snapped him back into focus. What a heart-wrenching thing to have to do, telling that loved child he wasn’t her real father. His marriage, in a town of nonmarriages, has always been considered perfect; both he and Ruth are honest and honorable people – it’s a wonder he ever made it in that dishonest, perfidious industry.

I suppose that always, from the start, they’d meant to tell Marisa the truth; and knowing Ruth as I did, I was sure it wasn’t a very shameful truth. Presumably they’d put it off and put it off, trying to decide what age would be the right one. Not this year, she’s just a kid. Maybe next year, they grow up so quickly. And then Ruth had again become pregnant; had they convinced themselves that presently, when Marisa had a small brother, things would become easier?

Easier! It seems incredible in our world, and in that city of prestigious hospitals, but something went disastrously wrong. One day it appeared to be a normal pregnancy with five weeks to go, next day it was the emergency ward and an oxygen tent. Ruth nearly died and, thank God, a decision was made not to save the baby, which had suffered brain damage during delivery. It was six weeks before Ruth recovered sufficiently to be told she could never have another child.

So there was only Marisa, and how infinitely precious she must then have seemed. Did they really have to tell her? Supposing it turned her against them? And there the agonizing indecision had stayed, a cancer of untruth in the minds of two honest people: until a dinner-party argument had tipped the scales – we all know those scales, they take very little tipping.

Marisa came out of the bathroom and padded over to where I was sitting. In pajamas, hair tousled, she looked twelve years old again, beautiful eyes clouded by sleep – and, it seemed, by doubt: ‘Will, those things I did, were they wrong?’

Moral sense is always touching. I said, ‘Right, wrong, who knows? Who cares, as long as you get yourself straightened out and happy again?’

She smiled and kissed my cheek. I went with her to the bedroom door and looked in. ‘Sound asleep. I bet you sleep sound too. Get up when you feel like it – I’ll be out, got to see to my boat.’

‘You have a boat?’

‘Last time I looked. Weather like this, she may be at the bottom of the river by now, she’s an old lady.’

Her eyes were closing as she stood there. Mine didn’t close for a long time: continuing mental indigestion.

3

I can’t discover the origins of Mary Celeste II, but whoever christened her had a dark sense of humor. You may recall that in 1872 the brigantine Mary Celeste (I) was found off the Azores, bowling along under half-sail with no one on board, not a soul; the captain, his wife and baby daughter, and a crew of seven were never heard of again. Dozens of explanations have been suggested over the years, from drunken mutiny – the cargo was commercial alcohol, but it would have killed anyone who drank it – to sea monsters, plague and waterspouts. Conan Doyle announced that the tea in the galley was still warm and breakfast was cooking – absolutely untrue. It remains one of the great mysteries of the sea.

Mary Celeste II is a twenty-foot cabin cruiser, of sorts, with a stumpy mast and no sail. She is steered, not by a nice tidy wheel in the cabin but by an old-fashioned tiller. (Does this indicate that she was once a sailing boat?) When you’re at the tiller the engine hatch, under which reposes a bloody-minded old diesel, is at your feet, so you can control her speed by leaning forward and dealing with this machine directly, an unusual procedure. Such arcane details make her an object of amusement; and so does her figure; she’s tubby, and it looks as though successive owners arrived at her present eccentric shape by adding bits and pieces whenever they felt the urge. I’m not sure how far she’d sail with no one on board, but she can potter very agreeably to and fro on the Columbia, as long as I keep her well away from the infamous bar where river and ocean collide, and where many ships a hundred, two hundred, times her size have come to grief. I’ve described her at some length because she plays a role in this story, and one not unworthy of her notorious name.

I bought her from the man who was moving out of the apartment when I moved in: bought her for a song, which is all I could afford and maybe all she’s worth. I love her dearly. Greg Johansen, who owns the small marina on the Skipanon River where I keep her, is fond of her too. On that particular morning he wouldn’t let me take her out of the water – or more properly wouldn’t take her out of the water for me – because, he said, once this wind had blown itself out we’d be having an indian summer: perfect weather for Mary Celeste and me to go pottering. As a result I left her where she was, one of those negative decisions which have positive consequences.

When I got back to the house, which contains three large apartments on its three floors, I saw that Andy Swensen was cleaning the panes of glass in and around the grandiose front door. My heart fell because he only does this job, very badly, when he feels talkative, waylaying any hapless tenant who needs to enter or exit. I suppose I have to describe him because he too, like Mary Celeste, is important to what follows. He’s supposed to be our caretaker, but since the apartments are entirely self-contained, each having its own central and water heating, there’s nothing much for him to do except keep the front and back yards tidy and flourishing; he doesn’t like gardening, or any other form of physical labor, so they’re always neglected. He lives, with a mountainous wife, too fat to move, in the basement; this is by no means as bad as it sounds because the house is on a steep slope, and at the back his windows offer all the light in the world and a fine view of the river. He’s the half-brother of the owner, who resides in a squalid mobile home in the middle of a field about ten miles out of town, making a small fortune from our combined rents.

When I’d run the gauntlet, declining to gossip – I knew I’d pay for it; Andy can be spiteful – I found Marisa sitting at the table in the bay window admiring the view. Showered and dressed and as fresh as a violet, she was eating toast and butter and apricot jam. Nick was singing ‘Shenandoah’ in the bathroom. It was nice, for a while anyway, and chapter nine notwithstanding, to have youngsters around again; I knew a sudden pang for my solitary state in life – brought on, of course, by myself.

‘So,’ she said, ‘how was your boat?’

‘As dotty as ever.’ I had a feeling that in more normal times she’d have been asking for a day afloat (I didn’t then know she was afraid of water) but these weren’t normal times, and there was only one thing on her mind. She waited until I’d helped myself to coffee before saying, ‘How do I find him, Will? Where do I start?’

I’d known last night exactly where she could start: with a very sharp lady who lived in a large old house in Portland, Connie Sherwood King. But during the night this idea had spawned another, as I’d hoped it would: Connie was a powerful card, and I wasn’t about to play her without taking at least one trick; so I replied, ‘OK Marisa, let’s deal. I’ll help you start your quest, if you let me call your mother and tell her you’re all right.’

While she was considering this, blue eyes fixed on a piece of toast, Nick came out of the bathroom. Marisa transferred her gaze to her best friend. ‘Will wants to deal. He’ll help me if I let him call home.’

‘Depends how good the help’s going to be, doesn’t it?’ The generations were once again locked – he reminded me of my son, Harry.

Marisa said, ‘He’s right. How good is the help going to be?’

‘I have up my magical sleeve a lady who knows everything that’s gone on in and around Portland for the last forty years, and I mean everything.’

‘Then she’d know rich-as-hell Mr Hartman.’

‘Certainly. If he exists.’ I thought it better not to add that Connie would only divulge what she knew after her prodigious memory had scrutinized it with extreme care; her middle name was Diplomacy. She was ‘old money’ herself – except that her father had spent it all.

‘Would she know about Dad’s first movie, the bummer?’

‘Of course.’

‘How come?’

‘She used to be a journalist, she wrote the social page for umpteen years.’

They considered this for a while, and we all gazed out of the window. The Washington hills, rising to mountains, were rain-washed and sparkling clear: too clear, it’s never a good sign. Tremendous cumuli were sailing in majestically from the northwest where the Pacific builds its most magnificent clouds, and their shadows came sliding, undulating towards us: down the forested slopes and into the Columbia, turning it from icy blue to an ominous purple-gray, against which two tugs, coaxing a vast barge upriver towards Longview, remained dramatically sunlit. I never tire of this ever-changing panorama and have to work with my back to it.

Marisa said to Nick, ‘What do you think?’

‘I think you should go for it.’

Marisa nodded and finished the toast; then, eyes fixed on me over her coffee: ‘For a start you’d better know I laid a false trail. Unless I screwed it up they think I’ve gone south – to New Mexico, Santa Fe.’

‘Clever old you.’

‘I don’t know. They’re not silly.’ A shrug. ‘If you call her she’ll be on the next plane.’

‘Probably.’

She glanced at her watch and said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’ Even the glance at the watch had a meaning, as I was to discover in a minute; it told her that the time was 9.40 and the date the 6th, Tuesday. I went to the phone, found the number in my book and tapped it out. If I knew Ruth she’d be sitting at the other end of the line, anxiously waiting. In fact as soon as I heard a woman’s voice I said, ‘Ruth?’ even as I realized it wasn’t Ruth.

‘No, this Luanne. Mrs Adams out, Mr Adams studio.’

I pressed the mute button and said to Marisa, ‘Luanne. Want to speak to her?’ She shook her head. I told Luanne I’d call again later.

With some satisfaction, Marisa said, ‘She’s never home 9.40, Tuesday morning. Tennis.’

OK, game to the little girl, set and match still to be played. I couldn’t see Ruth frisking off to the tennis club in the middle of a crisis, but anyway … I said, ‘When does she get back?’

‘Around noon.’

‘Then I’m calling her at noon.’

Looking even more pleased with herself, she said, ‘But right now we get on with your side of the deal.’

‘I guess.’ I suppose if one’s going to be conned, it might as well be by a pretty girl.

My call to Connie Sherwood King in Portland was more productive, she even sounded pleased to hear from me again. ‘Sure,’ she said, ‘come on by. Any time before a quarter of one, I have a luncheon.’ ‘Luncheon’ was pretty darned good; I hadn’t heard anyone in Oregon, and few in the United States, use it.

I said to Nick, ‘Better take both cars.’

‘Why?’ asked Marisa.

‘Because if your mother decides to fly up here immediately I’m going to have to meet her.’

She got it in one. ‘And then you’ll want to talk like grown-ups, right?’

‘Right.’

‘With me out of earshot.’

‘Right.’

She caught Nick’s eye and received some kind of signal which I couldn’t unscramble. He said, ‘Good idea really, and Portland’s only just up the road.’

I suppose it’s the British side of me which can never think of a ninety-mile drive as ‘just up the road’. Ninety, a hundred and ninety, nine hundred and ninety miles, the Americans in their vast country think nothing of it; their cars are extensions of their bodies. To me, a car is just a pain in what they sometimes call the butt. As soon as we left the house, the dreaded Andy Swensen popped up from behind the privet hedge which separates us from our neighbors. I can never decide whether he looks worse with his few hairs carefully draped over his bald head or with them trailing over his left ear, as now. He was armed with a pair of clippers, but if he’d been using them on the hedge there was no sign of it.

He gazed after us while we went to the vacant lot next door where the tenants park their cars; it is edged with brambles and old laurels, with even a rose or two left over from the days when a house had stood there. He was eying the two youngsters with lip-smacking curiosity, clearly trying to calculate which of them I’d lured into my bed. Or maybe even a threesome! My single state fascinates him, and his wife is obsessed by it; she’s one of those prurient sacks of fat who are forever reading the Sun and the Examiner, and making inaccurate predictions about other people’s sexual habits. My predecessor had warned me about her.

I’m sure he was delighted to see me get into my Taurus with Marisa, while Nick sat behind the wheel of her Subaru station wagon alone. He abandoned the pretense of hedging and went to report to the fat lady.

Marisa was sitting with me because I’d realized we had to get our story together before presenting it to Mrs Sherwood King. I said, ‘You’re not an illegitimate child searching for its father, and you’re not planning to surprise Mom with This is Your Life. So?’

‘Surprising Mom isn’t bad, Will. It kind of leaves things open. How about a surprise birthday party? People do it all the time. A surprise party and I want to invite a few of her old buddies from Portland. People she acted with way back when. And maybe her old friend, Mr Hartman, too.’

I said, ‘Marisa, I don’t think we mention Hartman; we’d only be putting the name into her head. Let’s see if she comes up with one of her own – it could be the answer.’

‘I think Hartman’s the answer.’ But all the same she saw the sense of what I’d said, and added, ‘OK, we’ll just hang the party on her, and see what gives.’

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