Death Notes

she did. But she wanted him to support us. She told him I was his responsibility as much as hers. I remember hearing that a lot when I was little. She didn’t want him around us or anything like that - I mean, I had “uncles” coming and going all the time. But my mom wanted money from him. She wanted him to pay for food and clothes and schoolbooks and things. And he did. We did pretty well, actually. And my mom told me he did it because she knew he wasn’t who he said he was. That’s why he gave us money. Then she died and the money stopped.’
    ‘She was blackmailing him?’
    Yvette said, ‘It didn’t seem like it then, but looking back, I see that’s what was going on.’
    ‘Do you know what she had on him?’
    She took a couple more bites of carrot cake, then smiled up at me with all the guilelessness of an ingenue.
    ‘If I did,’ she said matter-of-factly, ‘the money never would have stopped.’
     

52
     
    C lark Margolis might have been happier to see me at seven o’clock in the morning if he’d known I’d waited a half-hour dozing in my car in front of his house before knocking on his door. I’d been running on caffeine and adrenaline since my ‘date’ with Les Barton, and it finally caught up with me when I got to his house.
    But thirty minutes was all I’d needed. I felt fresh as a rose, even if I didn’t smell or look like one.
    ‘This isn’t a good time,’ Clark said when he opened the door and found me on his front porch. ‘I’ve got to get ready for school.’
    ‘This is important,’ I said.
    He caught the urgency in my voice and opened the door wider for me to pass inside. The smell of coffee filled the house and I prayed he’d offer me a cup.
    ‘Coffee?’ he said, as I followed him back to the kitchen. ‘Toast?’
    I said yes to both, so he set the breakfast he’d been about to serve himself in front of me and busied himself with a second serving.
    ‘This is about Dad, I guess,’ he said over his shoulder. He pulled a mug out of a cabinet and filled it with coffee, then drank it black.
    ‘I met with your half-sister,’ I began.
    He cursed. ‘What does she have to do with Dad?’
    ‘This may not sound very good, but here’s what she said.’
    I told him as gently as I could about the blackmail and the false identity.
    ‘She’s lying,’ he said. ‘She didn’t know my dad.’
    ‘She has receipts,’ I said. The contents of Glen Faddis’s accordion file. ‘Bank statements that show the money coming in every month. Clark, she has copies of the checks your father wrote.’
    The toast popped up in the toaster and we both started. Clark pulled the bread out, threw it onto a plate and began to butter it with savage little strokes.
    ‘It’s a lie,’ he said. ‘It’s a lie.’
    I pulled a stack of pages from the folder I’d brought in with me and set it on the table.
    ‘Is this his handwriting?’
    He whirled around from the counter and his eyes found the copies. As soon as he saw them, he crossed over to the table and picked them up, staring hard at the signature, crisp and legible in the same bold, back-slanted hand I’d seen on the photograph on his mantel.
    Clark flipped through page after page after page. As he did, the pain in his eyes grew and deepened. They became the eyes of a little boy, filled with disappointment and hurt, born from broken promises, from neglect and deceit.
    ‘Is that his signature?’ I asked again softly.
    He laid the pages down on the table and nodded.
    I pointed to the copies. ‘Do you have any idea what this is about?’
    He shook his head, then trudged like a robot back to the counter and brought the plate of toast and his cup of coffee to the table. The papers and open folder lay between us, the ghost of a father he’d never really known.
    ‘What can I do to help?’ he said.
     

53
     
    C lark Margolis and I spent the rest of the morning rummaging through old trunks and boxes in his attic. We found his parents’ marriage license from their elopement to Reno. The name on the certificate was Matthew L. Margolis, Match’s proper name, the same name he’d used on Clark’s birth certificate, and on the copy of the certificate for Yvette, which we found tucked in the back of an ancient photo album.
    It was close to noon when we found Match’s birth certificate. Clark’s fingers were trembling as he pulled it from its decorative envelope. His face fell as he read the entries in each little block. Then he handed it