Act of God

it. Our mother is dead. We do have an aunt who runs a curio shop up in Salem .”
    “Her name and address?”
    “Darlene Nugent. I believe she lives above the shop, and that’s called ‘Sixties,’ on Bowdoin Street .”
    He believes. “I take it you’re not too close to your aunt, either.”
    The lips curled some more. “Closer than Darbra.”
    “You have a recent photograph of your sister?”
    “Unfortunately, no.”
    “Any thoughts on where I can get one?”
    “All roads lead to Traci Wickmire, Mr. Cuddy. She has a key to my sister’s apartment, and I’m sure you’ll find something useful there. If you decide to help Mrs. Rivkind and me, I’ll be happy to give you whatever authorization you need to do what you have to do and take what you have to take from Darbra’s place.”
    “Your sister has an unusual first name.”
    “I noticed that you’ve avoided using it.”
    It troubled me somehow that he was right.
    Proft got the glint back in his eye. “Something almost... sinister about it, isn’t there?”
    I said, “Was she named after your aunt?”
    “Partly. Darbra’s twenty-eight—four years younger than I am. I was named after our father, but my mother’s second pregnancy—with Darbra—was what caused him to ‘fly the coop,’ as I think they used to say. Accordingly, Darbra got her name partly from my aunt—my mother’s younger sister—and partly from my mother, who was named ‘Barbra,’ like Streisand. Could have been worse, don’t you think ?”
    “I’m sorry?”
    The lips curled so much they nearly bowed. “Well, how would you like going through life as ‘Barblene’?”

    I asked William Proft to wait outside until Pearl Rivkind came back. I turned in my chair, slid out my secretarial pull-tray and put my feet up on it. As always, there were a lot of people milling around the subway station. I raised my window a couple of inches.
    Two sketch artists, maybe Cambodian, were sitting in sand chairs next to their easels out of the sun, hucking the people who walked past. “Hey, lovely lady, we do your portrait? Seven minutes, no waiting.”
    An elderly black man, in broken boots with no laces, leaned against the wall of the station, talking loudly to nobody in particular. “No, I never did live there, man. Not in the new New York . Nossir, I lived in the old New York , the days gone by when New York was mostly white and all polite. My brothers and sisters of color, man, they mint that city, ruint it for everybody.”
    In front of the black man, a carrot-haired boy in his late teens was ballroom dancing with a life-sized female doll wearing a white gown. Her high-heeled slippers were strapped to the tops of his Nikes as he whirled her around their cement dance floor, smiling proudly at the passersby as he gracefully avoided them.
    I went back to the notes on my desk. I don’t do divorce cases for the same reasons that Pearl Rivkind’s request troubled me, but I only had to think of Beth lying in her hillside overlooking the harbor in South Boston to know I’d already made up my mind in Rivkind’s favor. I could turn down William Proft, wanted to on personality grounds, but having a missing-person case as a cover would make it a lot easier to deal with the Homicide Unit regarding Abraham Rivkind’s death, and having Proft’s authorization would allow me to get into both problems faster and smoother.
    The knock on the pebbled-glass itself had to come from Proft, and when I said “Come in” this time, he had to hobble himself to allow Pearl Rivkind to enter first. Without my saying anything, they took the same chairs they’d chosen the first time.
    Rivkind already had a tissue in her hand. “Well, what do you think? Can you help us?”
    Proft didn’t speak, maybe sensing that Pearl made the better ambassador.
    “Let me spell out some ground rules first, then you can decide.”
    Rivkind said, “Go ahead.”
    “First, I’ll need my money up front. I don’t care how you arrange that between yourselves, but I won’t be allocating my time so much to the Rivkind side and so much to the Proft side. Second, I’ll consider a call or report by me to either of you to be a report to both.”
    Rivkind looked at Proft. “That’s okay with me.” He nodded back.
    “Third, I’ll keep going until I think it’s hopeless or until I see a conflict staring me in the face. If a conflict comes up, I have permission from both of you to stay with one side of the case and tell