Bloodline (31 page)

Most of them lived in one of the moneyed towns on the coast, north or south of the city. Three of the partners lived in Cape Elizabeth, including one on Shore Road, a meandering lane that for years had been an enclave for old money. If Mr. Prine was on the ocean side, where the stately houses staked out their views of beautiful Casco Bay, the firm was pulling in some bucks.

There were others in Falmouth Foreside, a couple in Cumberland, one in Freeport. Two had chosen the urban gentry life of big old Victorians on the Western Promenade, and a couple lived in towns a few miles inland. They probably got their ocean fix from owning very big boats.

Of the twenty-five lawyers on the Wheaton, Hinckley list, twenty-one had their home numbers in the book, a wonderfully egalitarian gesture. None of those twenty-one numbers matched the Falmouth number on Missy's bill.

I stood by the booth and sipped my tea. As I sipped, the homeless guy came back by, pausing to grope in a trash basket by the curb. A very pretty young woman in business clothes and heels started to give him a wide berth, then saw me. My rugged good looks. My battered face. She hesitated, then swung back toward the homeless guy.

She knew a suspicious character when she saw one.

This didn't bode well for a warm reception in the Waspy confines of Falmouth, but, for lack of an alternative, I pressed on.

What I had was four names with no home listings. Two were pretty high on the list of asterisked partners, and I couldn't picture Missy Hewett having any direct dealings with the real fat cats. Two were associates: One was Gary T. Putnam, in the middle tier; the other a woman, Catherine G. C. Scarpetti, at the bottom of the Wheaton, Hinckley pecking order. When I'd called from Prosperity, just fishing, it had been a woman who had answered. I picked up the phone and dialed the operator and the Falmouth number.

A truck heaved by as the number rang and I covered the receiver. Four rings and a young woman answered, younger than the woman who'd answered before. I asked for Ms. Scarpetti. In the practiced manner of an experienced babysitter or au pair, the young woman said, no, there was no one at that number by that name.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm looking at the wrong name on this document. I meant to ask for Mr. Putnam. Of Wheaton, Hinckley.”

“Mr. Putnam isn't available,” the young woman said. “May I take a message?”

Standing there on the sidewalk outside the coffee shop, I pumped my fist in victory.

“No, I'm going to be out of the office,” I said. “It would be easier for me to call back later.”

“Gotcha,” I said to myself, startling the homeless guy. He looked up and I said, “Sorry.” I would have explained, but it was a long story.

But now that I had Mr. Putnam, what would l do with him? And did I really have him when I didn't know where he was? And until I had him in front of me, I couldn't begin to answer the more pertinent questions: What was his business with Missy? Was he her adoption lawyer? Who would she have gone to if she had wanted to take her baby back?

Gary T. Putnam, we had some talking to do.

I was gathering up my notes and tea when a Portland police cruiser pulled up beside my truck, still in front of the hydrant. A power window hummed down and the cop in the passenger seat, a young guy who looked like he was on a career-day outing for high school, said, “Hey.”

“Hi there, Officer,” I said. “Be right out of your way. Just had to make an emergency phone call and—”

“Negatory, pal,” the kid said. “Move that piece of junk, or it'll be out of here on a hook.”

Oh, my, I thought. The proverbial bad apple. Only the fact that I was on official business—and that the truck was still unregistered—kept me from dressing down the young brownshirt.

“Yessir,” I said, tossing my notebook through the window onto the passenger seat. “But didn't you like it better when cops were cops and there was none of this public relations stuff?”

He scowled. I smiled and slammed the door shut.

“You have a good day now, you hear?”

They followed me back down Congress Street and stayed behind me when I took a right and headed for the waterfront. I expected the blue lights to come on, but when I took a right at the next light, the cruiser went straight and left me to my business.

I swung back on Congress and drove north three blocks and pulled into a parking space in front of a bookstore. The truck was half on a crosswalk, but then rehabilitation was a slow process.

I got out and walked up the street to a small plaza where there were pigeons and a guy actually selling soft pretzels from a cart. A couple of crack addicts and you'd have a real big-city tableau.

It was only a matter of time.

One Portland Center was at the far end of the little plaza. It was a tan, tube-shaped, twenty-story tower with dark windows that made it look like it was wearing sunglasses and had something to hide. I stopped outside the revolving entrance doors and looked at the directory in the brass and glass case. Wheaton, Hinckley was on the seventh floor. I tucked my chamois shirt in my jeans and ran a hand across my hair and my unshaven chin. If I'd known the place was so nice, I would have worn my good boots.

The atrium was small but clean, with some mauve marble and captive trees and one of those trickling fountains, the sound of which always made me think some appliance had sprung a leak. A guy came out of the elevators as I approached them. He was silver-haired and well-suited, in the original sense of the phrase, and he looked at me like I was the plumber's assistant and should have known the service entrance was out back. I decided to toss out some legal terminology to let him know I couldn't solder a pipe if my life depended on it.

“De facto rigor mortis,” I mumbled to myself.

He fought back the urge to invite me to lunch at his club. The elevator was done in fake marble and mirrors, which allowed me to survey my face—probably not a good thing for my self-confidence. I looked like somebody who'd had a night out with the boys. In jail. Now he was nursing a hangover, a hundred-dollar bond, and trying to remember where he'd left his car.

I'd just have to rely on my natural charm.

The elevator was very fast and in no time at all the doors swished open and like somebody stepping out of a time machine, I stepped into the Wheaton, Hinckley lobby. There was classical music playing very softly and the floor was carpeted in cream, with Oriental rugs over it. On the walls were prints of sporting scenes. Retrievers with ducks in their mouths. Guys with shotguns, standing in skiffs. It was the kind of art rich guys put in their offices because their wives won't let them have it at home.

But if Wheaton, Hinckley had second-class art, it had a first-class view. I walked to a window beside an empty reception desk and looked out. The view was to the east: Casco Bay and the islands, which floated on the shimmering blue-green water like lily pads. A ferry was plugging along halfway between the mainland and Peaks Island, and its wake was a long white line, like the shiny trail of a garden slug. It was beautiful and mesmerizing, and I knew that if I worked here, I'd never get anything done.

“May I help you?”

A woman, fiftyish and handsome in a dark gray suit, had appeared behind the desk. She must have been the receptionist, but she did not look like she was going to be receptive. In fact, she looked like she probably had one hand on the alarm button and the other on her purse.

“Oh, hi,” I said. “I was just admiring your view. Beautiful.”

She nodded warily.

“I'm looking for Gary Putnam.”

I said it familiarly, like we were old fraternity brothers. When we met, we'd do the Delta Kappa Gamma handshake.

“Do you have an appointment with Mr. Putnam?” the receptionist said.

“No, I was just passing through town and I thought I'd take a chance. If he was just sitting, looking out at the view, I'd pop in and say hello.”

“Are you a personal friend of Mr. Putnam's?”

As opposed to an impersonal friend, I thought.

“No, not really. We just have a mutual acquaintance and a mutual interest.”

“And your name is?”

“McMorrow. Jack McMorrow.”

“And would Mr. Putnam know what this is regarding?”

I thought for a split second and decided to try to smoke him out.

“A woman named Missy Hewett,” I said.

The woman took out a piece of paper and wrote a few words. If Missy's name meant anything to her, she hadn't shown it. After she finished writing, she stood up.

Here's your hat, Mr. McMorrow. What's your hurry?

“Mr. Putnam is out of the office today, Mr. McMorrow. I'll give him your message.”

“Could I give you my phone number?”

“Would you like Mr. Putnam to contact you?”

No, I thought. I want him to write it on the wall of the men's room at the bus station.

“Yes, I would. I'll be out of town until Monday, but I'll be available from then on. I'd appreciate it if he could call.”

The woman took the number, writing it down as if it were a dirty word. I gave her my warmest smile, turned toward the elevator, and stopped.

“Is Mr. Putnam in court today?”

She gave a haughty little snort, as if I had come to her house for dinner and used the wrong fork.

“Oh, no,” the woman said. “Mr. Putnam is not a litigator.”

“What is his specialty?”

“Mr. Putnam is with our corporate services department.”

Corporate services? What did that have to do with makin' babies?

27

C
orporate law? What did that have to do with Missy Hewett? Did she know the guy from somewhere? The calls started before she came to Portland, so how did she connect with him from Prosperity? Did she call him to see if he could refer her to somebody else? If so, why call him several times? Did he put her off? The length of the calls said no, so did he advise her unofficially? Did he major in corporate law in school but minor in adoptions? Who was this guy?

Whatever the connection had been, Putnam would very soon know that I had made the connection, too. I decided to try him at home before the message got to him. Judging from Ms. Cool Reception, I still had time.

Falmouth was just north of the city, up Route 1 and over a bridge. It was suburbia with a moneyed edge, the kind of place where up-and-coming lawyers would live, inching their way closer and closer to the water as they climbed the ladder at the firm. It was a pleasant, affluent town, and it gave me the willies.

I drove up Route 1, the main drag, and passed Kmart and strip malls and a tennis club. Between the malls were car dealerships where they sold fancy foreign cars that cost far more than my house. At one
lot, a gray Rolls was parked out front, the pot of gold at the end of somebody's rainbow.

Not mine.

As I drove past in the old Toyota, I wondered: Did people live in places like Prosperity, Maine, because they didn't want to own a Rolls? Or did they not own a Rolls because they lived in places like Prosperity? I thought of people like Clair, and decided the choice to live in a place like Prosperity came first. If you'd never want a Rolls, you came to Prosperity. If you dreamed of that sort of thing, and all the other trappings of material success, you left. Then again, there was Missy who had left looking for something else altogether and hadn't had a chance to find it. But somewhere along the way, she had found Gary Putnam. Or Gary Putnam had found her.

And now I wanted to locate the fellow, which in a town this size couldn't be too hard. I didn't have an address and Putnam wasn't in the phone book, but any reporter could solve that one. Blindfolded.

I drove north until the malls started to thin out, turned around, and came back. At a service station, one that looked locally owned, I stopped and went into the waiting area where they kept the maps and plastic coffee mugs and machines that dispensed fossilized gumballs. There was nobody behind the counter, so I went into the garage and found a young kid holding a shop light and peering up underneath a car. I asked him where the town office was and he gave me directions: two miles south, left at the Pizza Hut. I asked him if he knew Gary Putnam and he said, no.

“How you like your Toyota?” the kid asked.

“Fine,” I said.

“Tough little trucks,” he said.

So I drove my tough little truck two miles south and took a left at Pizza Hut. Sure enough, the Falmouth town office was on the right, a neat brick building with two cars out front. I gave myself a last look in the rearview mirror, just to make sure the scabs were all in the right place, and went in.

It was one big room with a counter to separate the employees from the public. Seeing as this was the place that sent out the local tax bills, this probably was a good idea. An older woman with short silver hair got up from a desk and approached me, and I smiled to let her know that I was not there to complain. She smiled back.

“Hi,” I said. “I have a problem, and I'm hoping you can help me.”