Extenuating Circumstances (2 page)

"Who's this?"

Trumaine glanced at it. "That's Ira, at some occasion or other."

"He keeps his own picture on the desk?" I said with a laugh.

Trumaine grunted. "So he's a little vain."

"That's reassuring. I was beginning to think he was too good to be true." I glanced at the discrete piles of papers on the desk. "It certainly doesn't look like anyone was working here recently."

Len Trumaine permitted himself a small laugh. "With Ira it would be hard to tell. He's compulsively neat. Been that way since I met him."

"How long have you and he known each other?"

Although I'd asked the question innocently, Trumaine didn't take it that way. He pinked a little and trimmed up his waistline, as if, next to the compulsively neat Mr. Lessing, I'd made him feel particularly fat and sloppy.

"I met him in college," he said stiffly. "We roomed together at Vanderbilt. In fact, I was the one who introduced him to Janey -on a trip home."

"Where's home?"

"Louisville. Janey's my cousin, twice removed. Our families have lived across the street from each other since we were kids."

"You and Lessing went into business after the marriage?"

Trumaine nodded.

"You seem to have done all right in the big city."

"I've made a go of this company," he said with pride. "And Ira knows it. He'd have a hard time replacing me."

"Has that been discussed recently?"

"Not at all." Trumaine flushed red. "I'm going to have to get used to your way of talking, Stoner. You're blunt."

I sat down behind Lessing's desk. There were no signs of work or wear -no quill of dulled pencils in the quartz canister, no trailing circles of ink on the desk blotter where someone tried out a pen for the first time or the last, no script impression on the memo pad where Lessing had jotted down a note and torn off the top page. The man was more than neat -he was invisible.

I lifted a letter from the top of one of the squared-up piles of correspondence. It was a purchase order from a supply house dated the second of July -the Friday before the weekend of the Fourth. There was nothing ominous about it, nothing that would have required a midnight trip to the office. Trumaine glanced nervously at his wristwatch. "I think I should phone Janey. I don't like the idea of her being at that house alone. I mean a call might come in-"

"You go on back," I said. "I'll catch a cab and meet you at the house."

"I'm starting to get nervous," Len Trumaine said as he walked over to the door. "Maybe we should contact the cops." -

"You haven't done that already?" I said with surprise.

He shook his head.

"Why?"

"Janey," Trumaine said. "The thought of having to deal with so many strangers all at once terrifies her. And then, if something should go wrong, the publicity would be awful. Reporters, TV crews. I'm sure the Lessing family feels the same way."

"They know about the disappearance?"

"Janey and Meg Lessing, Ira's mother, are very close."

"Well, I think they better change their minds about the cops," I told him, "especially if Janey is right. She seems awfully, damn sure that something has happened to her husband."

"I'll talk to them," he promised.
 
 

3

I spent about an hour going through the neat piles of paper on Lessing's desk. The only nonbusiness items I found were two canceled checks -one for fifty dollars and one for ninety dollars- dated June 3, and made out to the Lighthouse Drug Rehabilitation Clinic on Monmouth Street in Covington. Lessing had paper-clipped them to the Sunday page of his daily calendar, as if they were important. They looked like charitable donations, but I took them with me anyway.

In the icy anteroom bronze-haired Millie was bent over a word processor at her desk. She glanced at me as I came out of Lessing's office. The yellow computer screen reflecting in her glasses made it look as if she had TV sets for eyes.

"Find anything interesting?" she asked.

"Not much."

I pulled up a chair and sat across from her. She turned off her computer, and the TV sets in her glasses went out with a blink. In spite of the chained hornrims and the prison matron's hairdo, Millie wasn't nearly as old as she dressed. Early thirties, at best. I had the feeling that it flattered some officious bone in her body to look the part of a secretary, even if it was the secretary from a forties melodrama.

"You mind talking to me about Mr. Lessing?" I asked.

She smiled encouragingly. "Not a bit. I'd do anything to help Mr. L. or the missus."

"You like him, don't you?"

"I like him a lot," Millie said. "He's a sweet man and real well organized. I like Mr. T. too. But he can get cross when things go wrong. Mr. L. don't have a cross bone in his body. He's always so kind."

"Do you know if he was working on something special this past week?"

"Don't think so. Truth is he was only in the one time last week, on Friday. To sign the checks."

"So he spent the week away from the office?"

"I guess you could say that," Millie said. "But then he don't spend much time here, anyway. What with his commission meetings at the Court House, he only comes in three, four times a week normally."

"The commission takes up that much of his time?"

"Guess it must," Millie said. "It's been like that since I come to work here three years ago. Mr. T. handles the everyday stuff. Mr. L. comes in for meetings and to sign checks."

"Your boss didn't have a problem with drugs or alcohol, did he?"

Millie gave me a look. "Of course not. What makes you say such a thing?"

"I found two checks on his desk made out to a drug rehabilitation clinic."

Millie laughed. "You must mean the Lighthouse."

"That's the name all right. Why is that funny?"

"'Cause Mr. L. ain't no patient there. That's just a charity he contributes to. In fact, he had a lot to do with starting the place up -him and Mr. Geneva. I think Mr. L. paid for the lease right out of his own pocket."

"Your boss must be a generous man."

"He's got a soft spot for street kids." She scowled as if she didn't share the same weakness.

I got up from the chair. "This guy Geneva you mentioned, where could I find him?"

"At the Court House," Millie said. "He's on the commission too. Mr. Don Geneva."

I started for the door.

"You don't really think something has happened to Mr. L., do you?" Millie called out.

"I don't know, Millie. Probably not."

"I hope you're right," she said, looking concerned.

"There just ain't enough like him to go around. Most men are out for what they can get." She raised her ring finger and waved her wedding ring at me as evidence.
 
 

I caught a taxi on Madison and had the cabbie drive me through the boiling, smoggy heat to the Court House on Fifth Street. It was a three-story stone fortress with barred casements and balled turrets and a general air of ugly utility, like a Protestant orphanage. The information carrel inside the lobby was deserted. In fact, most of the first floor had emptied out for lunch. The only sounds came from the wall fans, buzzing on their consoles, and a few typewriters clicking away behind pebbled-glass doors.

I walked across the lobby to a staircase where a bluejacketed security guard sat dozing on a stool. A Turfway Racing Form lay at his feet, flapping gently in the breeze from the fans. I made enough noise as I approached to wake him up. He resettled his Sam Browne around his tubby gut and gave me a rancorous look, as if he'd caught me napping.

"Can you point me to the commissioners' offices?" I asked.

"Ain't no one there," the cop said. "Most folks eat lunch this time of day."

"Let's pretend I already ate."

"Upstairs. Second floor." He jerked his thumb at the staircase above his head as if he was showing me the gate.

There was a directory on the wall at the top of the staircase with each of the commissioners' names listed on it, followed by an office number. Ira Lessing was 210. Don Geneva, 216.

I tried 210, but it was locked tight. I made a mental note to ask Len about getting me a key to the place, then walked down to 216. The door to Geneva's office was wide open. Inside, a well-dressed blond man in his early thirties was sitting at an oak desk, feet up, holding a sandwich in his right hand and a Wall Street Journal in his left. I would have bet that he was a lawyer. He had that look about him, as if he had the world by the balls.

"Help you?" the man said as I walked in.

"You can if you're Don Geneva."

The man pointed with his sandwich at the placard on the desk in front of him, and I caught a whiff of bologna. The placard read "Don Geneva, City Commissioner."

"Your name is?" Geneva said, taking a bite of the sandwich.

"Stoner. I'd like to talk to you about one of your colleagues, Ira Lessing."

"You a friend of Ira's?"

"I'm working for the family."

Geneva chewed on that for a second. "I'm pretty close to Ira and Janey, and I don't recall hearing your name."

Now, I was sure he was a lawyer. "Len Trumaine hired me this afternoon."

Geneva smirked when I mentioned Trumaine. "Plastics stuff?" he said, as if Len and plastics were the least interesting things in the world.

"No. I'm a private detective. Mr. Lessing has been missing since Sunday night, and the family's hired me to try to find him."

Geneva's mouth fell so wide open I could see the bologna on his molars. He dropped the newspaper on his desk and the sandwich on the newspaper, sat up in his chair, and gawked at me.

"If this is a joke . . ."

"It's not a joke, Mr. Geneva."

Geneva put his hands on the desk and pushed himself back in his chair, as if he was going to stand up. But he didn't stand up. He just sat there, looking stunned. "Chrissake," he said in a shocked voice. "You got ID?"

I showed him the photostat of my license. He stared at it blankly, then handed it back to me.

"Maybe you could answer a few questions?" I asked.

"Sure," he said, still looking stunned.

"When's the last time you saw Mr. Lessing?"

"Here. On Friday. At the commission meeting."

"Was anything special discussed at this meeting? Any project that Lessing was involved in?"

"No. It was a slow day, even for July. We had a couple of zoning disputes and building-code violations. Nothing that anyone really cared about, if that's what you mean."

"Did you talk to Lessing?"

"Of course I did," Geneva said. "We're good friends."

"Did he mention any plans for the weekend? Any business plans?"

Geneva thought about it for a second. "No. He said he and Janey were going to watch the fireworks on Sunday, like they do every year. He asked what Jeanne and I were planning for the Fourth. You know, small talk."

"Did he seem at all preoccupied to you? Distracted or depressed?"

"Ira depressed?" Geneva said in a scoffing voice. "Ira is one of the most upbeat men I've ever met. He's always positive. That's just his nature. A decent, positive man. Just ask anyone here at the Court House. Anyone in Covington. Hell, everybody likes Ira."

He got a worried look on his face, as if he was considering what he had just said. "Christ, it's awful to think that something could have happened to him."

It surprised me a little that a guy like Geneva, with his razor-cut good looks and snotty air of self-possession, could get shaken up about anything other than the loss of a retainer. Apparently Lessing had made an impression on him. And that impressed me.

"Lessing didn't mention a place called the Lighthouse at the meeting, did he?"

Geneva half smiled, as if the name was familiar to him. "Why do you ask?"

"He left some checks on his desk made out to it."

"That's normal. Sam Kingston, the director, is always phoning Ira up for an extra buck."

"The Lighthouse is one of Lessing's projects?"

Geneva nodded. "It's a clinic on Monmouth for teenage drug abusers. Ira started the thing by personally soliciting contributions. He even got me to pitch in. Eventually we got the commission to fund the place. It's a step toward cleaning that damn street up."

"What's so special about Monmouth?"

"There's a good deal of drug trafficking and prostitution around the bars there. And that upsets a lot of people, not just Ira. Of course nobody did anything but complain until Ira came along. He paid the bills for the clinic out of his own pocket for almost a year. Still pays a few, when the grant money runs low."

"Why so generous?" I asked.

"Ira thinks the city should look after the street kids -and all the other folks who haven't had the advantages that we've had." Although he said it with the sort of light irony that you'd expect from a guy like him, the irony was mixed with something respectful and fond.