Blunt Darts

I said, and I summarized my day for her. She sounded like a little girl when she spoke again. “I should have realized that your prediction about his discovering you would be accurate. I am an old woman, Mr. Cuddy, autocratic and perhaps even cranky. Stephen is all I care about anymore. I will pay you to search for him until you advise me it’s hopeless.”
    “I’ll call you again when I know more.”
    “By the way, I was never contacted by this DeMarco girl regarding Stephen.”
    “That’s odd. Maybe she thought it best not to disturb you.”
    “Perhaps that’s what she was told to think.”
    I was nodding as I hung up. I drummed my fingers on the tape machine, then dialed another number. Valerie picked it up on the second ring.
    “It’s John,” I said.
    “Oh, John, how are you doing? What have you found out?”
    “Not too much. I’d like to ask you some questions about Stephen.”
    “Oh, I’m ten minutes late for a tennis match now, and Marie will have to give up the court if I’m not there in five minutes. How about meeting me for a dnnk tonight.”
    “Sorry. Prior engagement.”
    “Oh.” I could hear her frown over the phone.
    “I’ll be in Bonham early tomorrow morning. How about lunch?”
    “Terrific. I’ll pack a picnic basket and we can go down to a great swimming beach, and we—”
    “Slow down. You’re on vacation. I’m working.” The frown-pause again. “Well, you still have to eat lunch, don’t you?”
    “Yes.”
    “Good. Pick me up at my place. Seventeen Fordham Road, first floor. Eleven-thirty. I’ve got to run. Bring your trunks. ‘Bye.”
    “Val—”
    Click.
    Annoyingwoman.
     
     
     

     
    If Father’s First were located in a poorer neighborhood than Beacon Hill, it would be a dive. Being on Charles Street, it’s a charming institution. It’s dark, dingy, and jukeboxed, with a mixed bag of gays, MBTA motormen, nursing students from Mass Gen-eral, and law students from Suffolk University. I spotted her near the corner. She was wearing a disguise, sort of.
    I slid in next to her. “I like your fatigue jacket,” I said.
    She looked down into her beer. “You realize that this could cost me a job I’ve worked toward for six years?”
    I ordered a screwdriver. “If it makes you meet guys like me in places like this, it can’t be such a great job.” She looked up, but her hands kept toying with her beer mug. “It’s not, really.” She reached into a big leather tote bag and withdrew a file folder. She passed it to me. “Read it. No notes. No copying.”
    It took all of three minutes to read.
    “This is it?”
    “Yup.”
    “After two weeks?”
    She nodded.
    “What’s going on, Ms. DeMarco?”
    “Nancy, please,” she said, more I thought from anonymity than cordiality. She took a sip of beer and began. “The case came in through Perkins on the thirteenth, the day after Stephen disappeared. He assigned me right away. He handed me the police reports, which he’d already had copies of. After I read them, he told me I’d be on my own because the judge wanted a quiet, accent quiet, investigation.”
    “How can you find a fourteen-year-old under that kind of mandate?”
    “You can’t. Look at the file. Initial police report. Five-minute call to the housekeeper. Follow-up police report. Alert calls to airport and train-station security. One leg visit to the bus stations. End present efforts.“
    “Amateurish.”
    She grimaced. “Worse. Perkins himself has loaded me with other files. I’m not complaining, but I was the operative with the most files pre-Stephen, and I’ve gotten more than my share since. Every time I try to do something on Stephen’s case, Perkins moves up the priority of some other case I’m on. I’d be embarrassed to talk with the judge—assuming Perkins would let me.”
    I confirmed that Smollett’s signature was on both the initial and follow-up reports before I closed up the file and passed it back to her. “What do you suppose Perkins is trying to tell you?”
    She put down her beer. “He’s a professional. That means minimal effort is intentional. And that probably means pressure from the client to keep it that way.”
    I took a sip of my screwdriver. “You know anything about the judge’s wife?”
    She looked surprised. “Perkins told me she was dead.”
    I nodded. “Years ago. It pushed Stephen off the deep end. I was wondering if something similar pushed him again.”
    She shrugged. “I don’t know. But then,