Act of God

1

    Usually they call first. Clients, I mean. Seventy , maybe eighty percent ofa private investigator’s work comes in through law firms, and attorneys rarely do anything without an appointment. On top of that, almost always you’re the one who has to visit their offices.
    That Tuesday afternoon, though, the knock came before the telephone rang. I looked up from my desk, which had on it what I’d been able to gather about a teenaged runaway from Vermont . The pebbled-glass part of my door was still shaking against the wooden frame, the stenciled JOHN FRANCIS CUDDY, CONFIDENTIAL INVESTIGATIONS dancing a little. That was odd, too, because most folks will rap on the wood, not the glass.
    When I said come in, they did.
    A woman and a man, she entering as he held the door open for her. The man nearly had to nudge the woman across the threshold so he could come in, too, and close the door behind him. People are uncomfortable bringing their troubles to a stranger, but from the awkwardly polite way the two of them moved around each other, I got the impression they weren’t used to being together, either.
    The man said, “Mr. Cuddy?”
    I stood up. “Yes?”
    He cupped his right hand gently around the left elbow of the woman. “This is Pearl Rivkind, and I’m William Proft” The woman said, “Mrs. Abraham Rivkind,” as though she were both correcting him and reassuring herself.
    To Rivkind, Proft said, “Sorry,” in a voice more formal than sincere. Then he looked to me. “I wonder if we could have a few minutes of your time?”
    It’s a good idea to be wary of off-the-street business, but a bad idea to turn it away automatically.
    I closed the file on the runaway and eased back down. “Please, take a seat.”
    My office has two client chairs that face my desk and two windows that overlook the Park Street subway station at the northeast corner of the Boston Common. Rivkind and Proft sat so that each was in line with one of the windows behind me.
    Pearl Rivkind was barely five feet tall, even with high heels. Into her mid-fifties, she wore heavy makeup that did little to hide her age and nothing to hide a lantern jaw that would make Jay Leno wince. Her hair was tinted a few shades redder than brown and chopped stylishly short. The silk dress was stylish, too, and went with the warm, late June weather outside, but the clinging silk only accentuated a body that would have seemed dumpy in a bulky bathrobe. It was her eyes that caught you up close, though. Big and brown and deep, the whites were bloodshot and bulged with the irritation of someone who’d lately spent a lot of time crying.
    William Proft was tall and lanky, taking a while to lower himself into the other chair. Thirtyish, his hair was sandy but balding front to back over a long face, hollow cheeks, and prominent lips that curled a little, a perpetual grin that you could grow tired of very quickly. He wore a seersucker jacket over a buttoned-down shirt and solid black tie. The jacket rode up on him as he finally got settled, as though he didn’t usually wear one or didn’t get to sit in it much. Lip close, Proft’s eyes caught you, too, but more like the guy at the next table in a restaurant who’s constantly staring at the food on your plate to be sure he’s ordered the best item on the menu.
    I said, “How did you find me?”
    Rivkind said, “My lawyer, he called around, got a a recommendation on you.”
    “Is there some reason he didn’t contact me himself?”
    “Yeah,” she said, leaning forward in her chair. “He doesn’t think it’s such a hot idea, my coming to see a private investigator. Neither does my son or anybody else, for that matter.”
    I was beginning to like Rivkind. She’d corrected Proft on the introductions, and she wasn’t afraid to be direct with me.
    Proft said, “Perhaps if I summarized our situation, you could get a sense of what’s involved here.”
    I was beginning not to like Proft much, but I said, “Go ahead.”
    He crossed his right leg over the left, showing Hush Puppy shoes I hadn’t noticed before. “Two weeks ago—that Thursday, actually, so almost three weeks now—Mrs. Rivkind’s husband was brutally murdered during an attempted robbery at his furniture store. This past Saturday—three days ago—my sister, Darbra, who worked as a secretary at the store, came back from vacation and seems to have disappeared.”
    At his mention of the husband, I looked to Rivkind and nodded in sympathy. Her