For Money or Mayhem

{11} A New Client

The brunette in front of me at the Analog had her hair pulled up in a Saturday-morning-and-I-don’t-care knot on top of her head. I saw her often. You get to recognize people in a neighborhood like this. Usually, her hair fell straight below her shoulders and was brushed so silkily shiny you could almost see through it. This morning, as she leaned on the counter chatting with our friendly barista, she was wearing a short jeans jacket that left several inches of grey t-shirt exposed, cutting enticingly across her butt over black skin-tight jeans. Her white socks were pulled up over the legs above her Converse high tops, nearly to her calves. I was noticing everything female and feminine this morning, as if my own senses had just been awakened to the opposite sex. But even when she turned away from the counter and looked at me with a smile almost as big as the bag slung over one shoulder, my mind was on Andi.

The barista, Lonnie, had already started pulling my regular double short Americano and kept up a running conversation asking me how my weekend was going and how the new job was working out. Seems that everyone knows a little about everyone in this town—especially Lonnie. His sandy hair and two-day beard were as much a part of the atmosphere here as the fact that he pulled the best shots on Capitol Hill. I’d just answered with a quick, “Fine,” when I felt two delicate hands cover my eyes and a voice whisper “Guess who.”

My heart skipped a couple beats and instead of answering I reached up and slid the hands down to my lips and kissed the fingertips. “Morning,” I said softly as I turned toward her.

If my heart had skipped beats before, it stopped cold now.

“So that’s how it is?”

“Cali! I… I’m sorry. I thought…” Damn!

“I know. You thought I was Mom. Must have been a pretty good date last night.” I was still spluttering. The last thing I wanted was for anyone here to think I was involved with a seventeen-year-old. How could I have not realized it wasn’t Andi?

“Here’s your coffee, Dag,” Lonnie said.

“Did you want anything?” I asked Cali. My voice cracked and I realized the question could be interpreted in different ways.

“Tall mocha, please.” Lonnie turned and made the drink while I slid money across the counter. There were a few stools at a bar under the corner windows and a church pew cobbled together into a corner seat opposite. On the rough wooden table, a selection of fringe comic books were scattered among the remains of today’s newspaper. Cali picked up her drink and I waved off the change Lonnie offered me. We stepped outside and sat at one of the sidewalk tables, taking advantage of the fourth sunny April day in a row. Sunny April. Now, that was an oxymoron.

“Where’s your mom?” I asked.

“Still asleep with a smile on her face that covers the entire pillow. I just had to make sure the feeling was mutual.”

“That was really wicked of you.”

“Surprising you this morning?”

“That, and setting up that little date last night. You don’t look like a girl with cramps.”

“Oh, they come and go. And it worked, didn’t it? You really are dating now, right?” She was a little anxious, but all I could do was grin.

“I certainly hope so.”

“Good!” We sat sipping our coffees for a minute. I have a hard time concentrating on anything else when I’m drinking my first cup of coffee in the morning. Years ago, when I got out of the Navy, I adopted the Seattle fascination with lattes. But somewhere along the line I realized that I didn’t really like milk that much. It didn’t make sense to force myself to drink milk by flavoring it with coffee when what I really liked was the coffee. That first cup in the morning—the hotter, the stronger, the blacker, the better. Cali’s big sigh cut through my momentary reverie.

“I need a fake ID.”

“Excuse me?”

This girl could knock me for a loop with a word. How the heck did her mother manage?

“Do you know how to get a fake ID? I’d hire you to get me one.”

“Cali, that’s illegal. Besides which there are reasons for the laws against underage drinking. Your body isn’t equipped to handle alcohol at your age and especially at your size.” I realized I had adopted the tone of a lecturing parent and I cringed in spite of myself.

“Oh, really! If I wanted to get drunk I’d have said, ‘I need a bottle of booze,’ or something. What do you think I am? I don’t drink and I don’t do drugs. I don’t do a lot of other stuff, either, not that it’s any of your business.”

“Ok, sorry,” I said. This was my girlfriend’s daughter and I really needed to think about keeping lines of communication open. Hmm… Girlfriend. I liked the sound of that and just hoped it was true. It could be a long-term thing. “Why do you think you need a fake ID?”

“Because all the good music venues are twenty-one and older. I can’t get in to see any of the bands I want to see. It’s just so unfair.” Music? She wanted a fake ID so she could go to concerts? Man, I really had to catch up with the times. But right now, I had to sympathize while still steering her clear of the notion of doing something illegal and stupid.

My coursework with Lars included a lot of information on covert operations. That was his Navy Intelligence background and he required it of his staff. Twenty years ago he’d taught me how to create a second skin as he called it. Yes, I had a driver’s license, credit cards, social security number, and even a passport locked in a safe deposit box at the bank that had my picture but a different identity. It took years of planning and maintenance to establish a good cover, and secrecy above all else. Lars had suggested that he would be assigning the same task for his undercover operations class in the fall. Not even he knew I had maintained my cover identity all these years.

Today, I knew, college kids were ordering passable IDs on-line from an ‘entertainment’ company in China. They wouldn’t stand up to careful government scrutiny, but most bouncers couldn’t tell the difference and even the police had stumbled over finding the telltale marks.

“I see the problem,” I said calmly. “Do any of your friends have these or is this your own solution?” She looked at me a little warily.

“Maybe.”

I’ve got to learn to ask one question at a time. I just waited.

“It just seemed like an easy way to get in to see the groups I want to see. All the cutting edge music gets played in bars after ten. Even when there’s an all-age venue, they usually cut it off before the good stuff comes on. And Mel said—well, she sort of suggested it would work because…”

Andi had told me a few days ago to just be quiet and listen and I’d learn a lot. The wild child of ultra-strict parents, who got permission to go to the movies last night because it was a PG film and she’d be with Andi, Cali, and me but then went to an R movie when she ditched us, used whatever means she needed to stretch her wings. I assumed that meant she had already acquired a fake ID.

“Oh, poo! It was a stupid idea and I told Mel that to start with. Here. I won’t be needing these.” She pushed a computer printout of tickets across the table to me. I listen to a lot of music when I’m alone in my room. This was one of my favorite groups, playing at an over-twenty-one venue next Friday. “I’m sure you could find someone to go with you,” she smirked.

I’d been had again! She couldn’t keep the smile off her face; her eyes were so bright you could hear the laughter. This whole ID thing was just… Well, maybe there was some truth to it, but that wasn’t the point.

I became just as devious.

“Wow. Thanks, Cali. I’ll pay you for them. There’s this lady at the office who kinda dropped some hints—”

Cali’s expression collapsed on her face and she reached to snatch back the tickets, but I held the paper back out of reach. I grinned at her.

“You!” she snarled before breaking down in a fit of giggling. After she settled down, she looked me in the eye and I could tell she was a little worried. “You won’t hurt her, will you?”

I knew the question was coming from the heart of a girl who loved her mother more than anything in the world and was truly trying to make her happy.

“Cali, whether we are dating or not, I would never intentionally do anything to hurt her. Or you.” Her expression relaxed. “But wait a minute,” I said. “These tickets are for Friday. Doesn’t your show open Friday night?”

“Mmm. Yeah, so I guess I couldn’t have used them anyway, huh.”

“But don’t you want your mom at opening night?”

“Well, it’s gonna be a big flop and I’d rather you guys came Saturday instead of Friday. I couldn’t think of any other way to kind of tell Mom and you not to come to opening.” She shook her head and smiled as if it were the most logical thing in the world.

I glanced at my cell phone for the time and stood up.

“I need to get to work so I’m back in time for the barbecue this evening.” She looked at me skeptically.

“You’re going to work looking like that? Didn’t you just buy new clothes?”

“I’m just going up to my office on 15th. I’m not going into EFC.”

“Okay. That’s good, I’ll walk up there with you.”

“Maybe we should get a cup of coffee to take to your mom.”

“Maybe we should just let her sleep. It looked like she was having really nice dreams.” I chuckled and nodded my head, dropped my coffee cup in the compost bin, and turned up the street.

“Why are you headed up the hill?”

“Well, for one, I’m going to rehearsal. It’s wet tech today and I have to be a living body under the lights. It takes me about an hour to get to the theater by bus, but it’s a little quicker if I catch the one on 15th. And for another thing, I’m not done talking to you yet.” She had her shoulder bag slung over her back and held onto it with one hand while she continued to slurp her drink rather noisily through a straw. I was carrying only my laptop, so I offered to carry her bag. “Aren’t you a schoolboy! Thank you Dag.” I wasn’t sure I liked that, but when I picked up her bag, I regretted the offer.

“What do you carry in this?”

“My life. My life. My life.”

“You should consider only carrying one.”

We walked up most of the hill in silence. That’s pretty normal for me. As often as I walk the ten blocks to my office, I still get winded. Walking to an office ten blocks away was supposed to get me in shape. I guess I needed to go there more often. Carrying her bag didn’t help.

“Dag, you really are a private detective, aren’t you?” We were almost to my office when she popped that question out.

“I’m licensed.”

“Do you have a lot of… what do you call it? Caseload?”

“I have a couple of clients. The office downtown is pretty much full-time right now.”

“Could you take another?”

“I often take multiple clients. You can’t really work non-stop on most projects. You have to give them time to sit sometimes.”

“I’d like to hire you.”

That threw me. I looked at her as we went up the steps to my little office and I unlocked the door. Cali was a little shorter than Andi—about five-three. As long as I’d known her, she’d been blonde, but occasionally she put a temporary rinse in her hair to try something different. Like most teens I’d known in my life, Cali could go from frivolous to intense in three-tenths of a second. It didn’t pay to take what she said lightly.

“Come in and tell me about your problem, Miss Marx,” I said seriously.

I had no idea what she wanted, but it was obvious that she was serious and I didn’t want to brush her off. If I was going to date the mother, it behooved me to stay in the daughter’s good graces. She sat down across my desk from me. I decided my best bet was just to wait and let her take her time. Finally, she started.

“Okay. Here it is. My mom lied to me. God, that sounds terrible. I don’t mean it to sound so serious, but she told me something that I found out wasn’t true and I really want to know why and I want to know the truth, but I don’t dare confront her with it because I’m afraid she’ll be hurt by the fact that I didn’t trust her. I’ll keep whatever I find out a secret and will never let her know. But it’s about me and I just have to find out.”

Once the floodgates were open, Cali was off and running. All I had to do was give her a little nudge occasionally to keep the story flowing.

“My mom was totally in love with my dad. She was in college when they met and he swept her off her feet. He was a salesman, but not a sleazy one. He was really nice and so outgoing. He loved to party and took Mom to all kinds of nice places. They were married during her senior year in college and she got pregnant almost immediately. Just after graduation, he took her to a big convention and was showing off his young beautiful wife who was very pregnant. Then, all of a sudden he just collapsed. He died in her arms with a smile on his lips, a martini in his hand, and me in her tummy. Mom never married again. In fact, she’s hardly ever dated anyone. She just takes care of me.”

“I’ve heard the story before. It’s very sweet.”

“Yeah. Except it isn’t true.”

I was taken aback. We all knew the story of Andi’s tragic marriage. Cali started rummaging around in her bag.

“One of the sophomore U.S. History projects in school last year was to compile a family tree. I asked Mom for help and she kind of stalled. The next day after school, she pulls out a box of papers and says everything I needed should be in that box. It had her marriage certificate, birth certificate, my birth certificate and some papers about her parents and grandparents. It went back three generations. Just three! Then everything was listed as unknown, or ‘came from Germany,’ or some stuff. It was pretty pathetic. So I decided I’d try to push it back a little further. I did a bunch of searches and sure enough I found more information. I thought it would be cool to show it all to Mom, so I was going to do this big family tree for Christmas and I thought I’d try to get something that would help, so I started searching around and posted some things on a college site trying to get a copy of her senior yearbook. I managed to buy one for like twenty dollars, but it cost about as much to ship it to me.” She finally pulled a black and gold yearbook out of her bag. She plopped it on my desk as if I was supposed to know what to look for.

“Here,” she said, opening the yearbook to the senior pictures pages. I glanced down the pictures. There were about 400 of them.

“What am I looking for?” I asked.

“Anne Doreen Sullivan.”

“Was that your mom’s maiden name?” Now I got it. Anne Doreen. Anne D. Andi. Cute nickname.

“It’s what was on her birth certificate.”

I kept scanning down the pages. There she was. Anne Doreen Sullivan.

“I don’t think that’s your mom, Cali.”

“Not unless I’m some kind of albino black person,” she said. “But she’s got a diploma and everything. Why would she lie about something like this? I can’t find her picture in the stupid yearbook at all, under any name and I’ve looked at every single picture. I thought I was just going to find more about my mom, but now I don’t know who my mother really is. That means I don’t know who I am.” Cali’s eyes were glistening.

This had been eating at her for a year. She hadn’t told anyone about it. It must have taken a lot of courage for her to tell me about it. I wasn’t sure what I’d done to deserve that trust. And I wasn’t sure that I wanted the information she’d just given me.

“Cali, I don’t think I can do this.”

“I need to know. I keep thinking of all the terrible things that it could be and nothing you find out could be that bad.”

“Cali, what you have is a thread of information. It could have been a mistake on the part of the yearbook staff—putting the wrong picture in the book—even a practical joke. Maybe that’s why your mom didn’t have one already. But whenever you find the end of a string, there’s another end somewhere. You have to be ready to deal with all the tangles between them.”

“I’m sorry, Dag. I love my mom. Nothing in the world would ever make me stop loving her. And I would never, ever, do anything to hurt her. But it’s driving me crazy. I have to know.”

There was no question now. She was dripping tears even though she was holding her voice steady.

“I shouldn’t do this, Cali.”

“If you don’t, I’ll find some sleazy detective on-line and pay him. But I trust you, Dag.”

“Let me think about it. This could be very painful for all of us. I might not be… well, my relationship with Andi isn’t like yours, but I care for her very much. And for you. If she has maintained a false identity for all your life, there’s not much chance that I’ll find anything.”

“I understand. You have a contract?” That took me by surprise. “I want this to be clear that I hired you. I have two hundred dollars I can give you in advance. If it costs more, I’ll find a way to pay you.”

We’d gone from zero to ninety in a heartbeat. I wanted to just refuse her money, but she was determined and I really didn’t want her finding an investigator online. I’d find a way to get the money back to her. I pulled out a standard contract and made a couple of edits lowering my standard rate by half and estimating about half the hours I figured it would actually take if I did anything. There wouldn’t be any further payments and maybe I could refund some of her money legitimately. She signed the document and handed me the two hundred dollars. I signed the receipt and gave her a copy along with fifty dollars in change.

“What’s that for?”

“To pay for the tickets. You may be conniving to get Andi and me together, but I can pay for my own dates.”

“Okay,” she said, reluctantly. “Now if you could just tell me what my evil friend is up to for prom, I’d feel great.”

“Does Mel have a surprise for you?”

“I suppose so. She’s insisting I get a prom dress, even though I don’t have a date and really am not interested. I’m afraid she’s going to embarrass me to death.”

“Oh, surely she wouldn’t do anything to embarrass you. You’ve been friends for what, ten years?”

“Yeah, but she’s really getting weird. I know her parents bug her, but I’m getting kind of worried about her. And I’m afraid she’s going to try to fix me up with one of her freaky on-line friends or something. Some days—”

She stopped with a quick intake of breath, realizing that she was talking too much and not really wanting to put her friend down.

“Cali, if there’s something that’s genuinely worrying you then you should say something to your mom or to Mel’s mom. I know they are strict, but they do love her.”

“I know. I can’t just betray her confidence though. It wouldn’t be right.”

It amazes me how the teenage mind works. She wasn’t going to betray her best friend’s confidence because that would be against some unwritten code that said it wouldn’t be right, but she wanted to dig into her mother’s secret. I was thinking that maybe I should talk to Andi about all this myself. But even if I didn’t say anything, I was definitely going to check up on Mel and make sure Cali was safe.

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