The Girl with the Phony Name (3 page)

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Authors: Charles Mathes

BOOK: The Girl with the Phony Name
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“I
t would seem that our client, Dorothy Abigail Wieters, was a thief, Miss Trelaine,” said Walter Parrin, squinting like a rabbit, his spectacles riding half an inch up his fleshy pink nose.
It figured, thought Lucy. The whole deal now looked like it was probably just a cheap con. How could she have been such a sucker?
Yesterday Lucy had shelled out $375 for a one-way ticket to Albany—Pittsfield had no airport. Her rented car was another $60 a day. Plus mileage! At least Tanglewood and the Berkshire Festival weren't in session yet, and she could get a fairly inexpensive room at one of the big, old-fashioned hotels in Lenox.
Dwyer Parrin & Calabrese turned out to be a little clapboard house on a commercial thoroughfare. Walter Parrin was a gray puffball with dandruff on his shoulders. He had arrived at 10:20 and kept Lucy waiting another half hour, then spent a full ten minutes scrutinizing her driver's license, credit cards, and the admission file from St. Anthony's. And now the punch line: Her benefactress was a thief!
“What did she steal?” asked Lucy warily.
“This,” squeaked Parrin, taking a large manila envelope out of a drawer and dumping its contents on the desk between them.
“What is it?” said Lucy, not moving.
“A piece of jewelry,” said the little man. “A silver brooch.”
Lucy stared at the hideous thing. It looked like a massive silver belt buckle. It was the shape of the letter
C
and nearly three inches across. The thick pin turned the brooch into an
E
or a cent symbol, depending on where you slid it. The elaborate terminals held bits of what looked to Lucy like colored glass. The entire mass was covered with strange, interlacing animals and spiraling filigree.
“What does this … this article … have to do with me?” asked Lucy, struggling to stay cool. She had some taste, after all.
“This brooch constitutes your inheritance from Dorothy A. Wieters, deceased.”
“You mean there's no money?”
“The estate wasn't large. Whatever remains after legal expenses and the cost of locating beneficiaries such as yourself will go to a niece in Baltimore. Actually, we had been running the ad to which you responded in five major city newspapers for a month and were about to give up on you. You're very lucky.”
“Yeah, if I hadn't been so lucky to be in Chicago because I lost my job, I could have saved the five hundred dollars it cost to get here.”
“Beg pardon?” said Parrin, obviously not interested.
“If this thing, this brooch, is stolen, then how can this Dorothy Wieters woman leave it to me?”
“Because it was stolen from you. Miss Wieters made a deathbed declaration that she had stolen it from you.”
Lucy was baffled. “I've never seen it before in my life,” she snorted.
“There is a tape recording Miss Wieters made at the hospital,” Parrin droned, digging into another desk drawer and bringing out a cassette recorder. “It should explain matters sufficiently. May I play it?”
“It's not going to cost me anything, is it?” muttered Lucy.
Parrin didn't seem to hear. He pressed a button. A frail voice came from the little machine. It was the kind of voice that set Lucy's teeth on edge. Ignorant. Whiny. It reminded Lucy of half a dozen of her foster parents.
“My name is Dorothy Abigail Wieters. I used to be the
night cleaning-lady at Pittsfield General Hospital. This all happened one fall 'bout thirty years ago, I remember. I was walking through the charity ward, gonna get my bucket, when they brought this little baby in, her parents was killed in a crash. I sees that her little blanket was fastened with a beautiful piece of jewelry. I figured that she didn't need that silver and later, when nobody was around, I took it. The baby didn't mind. She just laughed and laughed. I took it and I hid it and I never told nobody. And I got to feeling worse and worse. So after a few weeks I come back to the charity ward to give it back to that baby, but she was gone. Supervisor said she was took by the state welfare people. So I never told nobody about the brooch. I kept it all the years. And I always felt bad, but I was afraid I'd get in trouble if I tried to do anything about it, so I didn't. I don't want to go to my grave with this thing on my mind, so I wants it should go to that child when I'm dead if she can be found. I know they never found her people, but I heard them calling her like it says on the brooch.”
Lucy felt gooseflesh running down her back. She picked up the brooch on the table. It was very heavy. She turned it over. The reverse was a spiderweb of worn engraving and ornate, old-fashioned lettering that read
Dumlagchtat mac Alpin Bethoc.
The name incised on the massive silver pin, however, was sharp and clear: LUCY MACALPIN TRELAINE.
 
“I'll be goddamned,” said the fat cop, slamming his desk with a sweaty palm. Paperwork scattered unnoticed onto the floor. “Lemme look at you.”
Lucy winced. Parrin, the lawyer, had told her to check with the police for details about the crash, but no one at the station had been much help or even showed any interest—until she found Sergeant Simchick. She didn't have anything against cops per se, but Simchick was pawing her like he was some sort of long lost canine brother. He was pressing his
palms into her collarbones now. Lucy feared for her shoulder pads.
“Little Lucy Trelaine. I don't believe it.” The man shook his head. His jowls swayed in the breeze. Lucy could smell stale beer on his breath. “Hey, Lou. C'mere. I ain't seen this kid since she was a baby.”
“Yeah?” said Lou, not looking up from the Smith & Wesson he was cleaning.
“She was just a little baby,” Simchick's eyes teared up. “Hey, fellas. Say hello to Little Lucy Trelaine!”
There were a few grunts. Sergeant Simchick had clearly reached the useless-old-fart stage of his career.
“Like I said, Sergeant Simchick …”Lucy said, trying to smile.
“Call me Walt!”
“Like I said … Walt … I'd be grateful for any information you might remember about my … parents. You are the man to see, aren't you?”
“Sure, honey. They sent you to the source. Come on. You come with me. We'll go get the file. Hey, guys. Me and Lucy's goin' to the file room, case anybody wants us.”
He lumbered off down the hall. Lucy followed reluctantly. None of the other officers even looked up.
At least the station was clean. Lucy had memories of sitting in filthy police stations in Boston after being picked up for running away from foster homes.
“I remember there was a whole big legal squabble about you,” Simchick was saying. He ran a fat hand over his head, plastering down the few remaining hairs.
“What do you mean?” said Lucy.
“The driver of the other car … you know about the crash, don'cha?”
“I know there was a crash.”
“Well, the guy wanted to adopt you. Felt guilty or something. The social workers didn't think that was such a hot idea. Some local priest got involved … I can't remember.
Anyhow, there was a lawsuit. The venue got changed. The state got involved. I never found out what happened. Where did you finally end up?”
“Boston,” said Lucy.
Simchick rolled his eyes. “Figures.”
Lucy had spent the first eight years of her life at St. Anthony's. After that she had lived in a succession of foster homes until she had finally escaped to college. Lucy couldn't even remember the faces of any of the people who had taken her in for the few bucks a week the Massachusetts Department of Social Services paid.
They were standing in front of a door marked FILE ROOM. Simchick unlocked it with a key from his ring and flipped on a light. The place had a musty smell. It was packed to the ceiling with boxes and metal file-cabinets.
Simchick had to suck in his stomach to get down the narrow aisle. At the back of the room he knelt with a grunt, opened a drawer, and began fingering through the manila folders. Finally he found what he was looking for.
“Here we are,” he said, rising laboriously. “‘Car crash ten twenty-three. Route Seven. Two fatalities. Baby taken to Pittsfield General.' This is my own report. Jesus Christ. I was thirty-four years old, can you beat that? It was like yesterday.”
Lucy felt sick. All her life she had celebrated October 23 as her birthday. Now this fat cop was saying it wasn't her birthday; it was the day her parents died.
“The driver of the other car got you out before the fire started. I seem to remember there was some guy from New York involved,” Simchick went on. “Yeah, here it is. Cicarillo, the driver.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Lucy softly, wanting to scream. She was suddenly full of unfamiliar emotions, feelings so strong and so immediate that they left her with no room to think.
“Yeah, it's all coming back to me now,” said Simchick, reading further.
Lucy was afraid to speak. Her heart pounded. She didn't want to know any more. She wanted to turn and run, but it was too late. Simchick was talking again.
“ … burned beyond recognition, both of them. Two suitcases in the trunk, also burned. We identified the driver from the car's license plate. Here we go. Alex Cicarillo. Caucasian male, age forty-two. Lived in Brooklyn, New York.”
“Cicarillo.” Lucy rolled the unfamiliar word around in her mouth. “This … Cicarillo … was my father?” Lucy braced herself with a hand against a file cabinet so she wouldn't fall.
Simchick shrugged. “He sure wasn't about to tell us. We didn't even know for certain that the woman was your mother. All we had was two dead bodies. Let's see, we talked to Cicarillo's sister”—Simchick glanced down at the report again.—“Theresa Iatoni, Mrs. Stephen. Also of Brooklyn. Yeah, this was the problem. The sister claimed the baby couldn't be her brother's, him being unmarried and all.”
“Then why was he driving the car?”
Simchick scratched his head. “Yeah, that was the problem. The sister claimed Cicarillo hired his car out for day rates. But he wasn't a licensed hack, so there weren't no records or nothing. The passenger—if she was a passenger and not some girlfriend the sister didn't know about—the passenger coulda been anybody. A tourist, a neighbor, just somebody looking to get to Vermont. One of our guys was even convinced the two had kidnapped you, but that never checked out. You never knew any of this?”
“No,” Lucy said almost inaudibly.
“Jeez. Somebody shoulda oughta told you. Anyways, the sister wouldn't have any part of the dead woman or of you. Wouldn't even pay the burial fees. That's when the priest got involved.”
“Where is this priest? Can I talk to him?”
“Father Hale, that was his name, I think. Hale, Hall, something
like that. Naw. He died in the middle of the lawsuit. He was just tryin' to help, that's all.”
Lucy thought of St. Anthony's. The nuns used to lock her in a closet because she wouldn't thank God for her oatmeal. Lucy wondered where she would have landed without that priest's “help.”
Simchick was still talking. Lucy struggled to pull her attention back.
“ … but I ask you, if this Cicarillo wasn't the father, how come nobody ever came looking for the woman? We're talkin' about a mother here, a newborn baby. You'd think that somebody would be expecting them somewheres and would scream bloody murder when they didn't show, right?”
“Nobody did?”
Simchick shook his head. “No missing person reports ever matched up. No lost baby stories came out of the whole Northeast that month.”
“But how did you know my name was Lucy Trelaine?”
“There was something with a name … I can't remember … .”
“This?” Lucy held out the silver brooch in her hand. Simchick's eyes lit up.
“Yeah! Son of a bitch!” He took the brooch and turned it over. “That's it.” He held it at arm's length and squinted to read the inscription. “‘Lucy MacAlpin Trelaine.' Yeah. We figured that beat Baby Jane Doe.”
“But it's my name,” said Lucy weakly.
Simchick waddled back toward the door.
“Maybe. Lucy MacAlpin Trelaine might be you. Or she might be someone who had a brooch that got stole. Or the name of a jewelry store. Or a silversmith. Hey, what's the matter, kid? Did I say something wrong?”
Lucy didn't hear him. She was crying. She was crying for the first time since she had flunked out of Harvard.
A
fter leaving Simchick, Lucy returned to her hotel in daze and checked out. Then she drove to the little cemetery the cop told her about, next to the Church of the Holy Trinity. The plot she was looking for was not hard to find. It was marked by a small, flat stone marked JANE DOE, DIED 10-23, followed by the year.
Lucy stood on the grass in front of the grave for a long time, struggling to control the unfamiliar feelings inside her. Who was this woman in the ground at her feet? Where had she come from? Where had she been going? Had Cicarillo been her lover? Had she died seated beside a stranger?
Lucy bent down and traced the dates on the stone with her finger.
“Hello, mother,” she said awkwardly.
Despite what her records said, Lucy had always believed she would be reunited with her parents one day, that they hadn't really been killed. All those years, shunted from foster home to foster home, ridiculed each year by a new group of schoolmates for being skinny, smart, different, Lucy had never given up hope. When she had failed out of Harvard, unable to keep up with the work load and hold down two jobs at the same time, Lucy had told herself that her parents wouldn't care, that her parents would still love her. Wherever they were.
“What am I supposed to use for hope now?” Lucy whispered to the gray stone. The wind rustled the locust leaves. A miscellaneous bird called in the distance. Maybe this was all happening for a reason. Maybe God was mad at her, after all.
“Listen to me,” Lucy said abruptly. “You'd think I'd never been an orphan before. Why should this get to me? Nothing's
changed. I'm Lucy MacAlpin Trelaine. I don't need anybody. I can take anything life can dish out, goddamn it!”
The stone didn't reply. Lucy turned on her heel and stormed back to her car, unsure of what she was so angry about. A thousand questions raced through her mind. Why had that Cicarillo man's sister been such a bitch? Was there a jewelry store in New York City called Lucy MacAlpin Trelaine? How old had her mother been when she died? People got married and had babies young in those days. Was she even married at all?
“Am I a bastard on top of everything else?” Lucy demanded of the rearview mirror. “Or are bastards just boys? What's female for bastard? Bastardette?”
The sky was blue with patches of pink. On the roadside, wildflowers danced in the light wind, the trees were just beginning to bud, blackbirds shunted among empty branches. But Lucy didn't see the spring at all.
Choking down her emotions, she drove south on Route 7, followed the road through Stockbridge, past the Red Lion Inn, and out of Massachusetts. After a while Lucy found herself on the Taconic Parkway. Only when she saw the sign did she finally understand where she was going: NEW YORK CITY, 60 MILES. What she intended to do once she got there, however, she had no idea.
 
Looking down on the bombed-out buildings from the elevated highway, Lucy Trelaine was terrified. Had she taken a wrong turn somewhere amid the concrete confusion of the last ten miles? The road signs were ambiguous when there were signs at all, and it was already dark. Was she about to be dumped into the desolation below?
The traffic crawled ahead, painted an eerie yellow by the halogen streetlamps. Lucy hadn't driven into a big city for years. Welcome Inns were always located at superhighway exits. She hadn't even owned a car when she lived in Boston.
A useless map lay sprawled across the seat beside her. The
New York City highway system resembled the insides of her computer, a million different-colored circuits, apparently all leading nowhere. At least the streets seemed to have numbers now. But what magic combination had to appear before she was safe?
Gradually the traffic thinned, the buildings grew taller, more electrified, until New York City loomed ahead like Oz. Lucy stayed on the highway until she found an exit marked UNITED NATIONS, figuring diplomats would always manage to park themselves in the right part of town.
For the next hour she drove through Manhattan, feeling out the orderly grid of streets, inspecting neighborhoods, trying to get her bearings.
Lucy had never been in New York before, but had heard enough stories to know how expensive hotels were. She didn't know exactly what her plans were, but it was a cinch she couldn't afford to stay at the Waldorf. She no longer had an income and the money clock was ticking.
She finally came across a TownLodge on West 57th Street. Lucy had occasionally stayed in TownLodges on weekends to save money. They weren't the most elegant accommodations in the world, but at least they were clean. There might be a better place somewhere in town, but Lucy was too tired to go looking for it. And she hadn't eaten anything since breakfast.
She pulled up in front of the hotel. A porter ambled out to the curb, took the four bags from her trunk, and wheeled them away in an open dolly. Lucy hoped she would see them again.
She drove to a rent-a-car location she had passed ten blocks away from the hotel and dropped off the car. Lucy was resigned to paying the $100 penalty for not returning it to Albany, but being charged the exorbitant 8.25 percent city sales tax on the entire rental made her mad enough to spit. Life wasn't nearly as much fun without an expense account.
She walked back to the TownLodge, dodging the outstretched
palms of the homeless on every corner, trying to ignore the littered streets, the hostile stares, the noise.
“Yeah?” said the hotel desk-clerk. He looked like he hadn't had a perky day in years.
“I'd like a single.”
“Front,” said the clerk, but no porter appeared.
“How much is the room?” asked Lucy cautiously.
“One hundred thirty-five dollars a day, not including taxes. Check-out time is eleven A.M.”
“Do you offer a weekly discount rate?” sputtered Lucy, looking around at the lobby. She had seen better furniture in airport waiting-rooms.
“You some kinda nut?” said the man and tossed her a key.
Ten minutes later, Lucy was sitting in disbelief on a rickety bed. The room was nothing like the TownLodge rooms she was used to. It was a dark little box with hideous Danish Modern furniture, like something that would spurt out if you squeezed 1958. At least the bellman had delivered all four of her bags. When she had given him a four-dollar tip, he'd scowled. She found a cockroach in the bathtub.
“Okay,” she announced bravely. “This isn't so bad. I've stayed in worse places. And I'm in New York. That's what matters. This is where my mother left from thirty years ago, and this is where I'm going to find out who she was.”
Feeling a little better, Lucy unpacked two of her suitcases—it took six and a half minutes—then paged through the tattered Manhattan phone book she found in the night table. There were no Trelaines. Lucy was relieved in spite of herself.
“But it doesn't prove there wasn't a jewelry store or a silversmith named Trelaine thirty years ago,” she said to the cracked ice bucket, which would have cost a Welcome Inn two quality points. She had to be Lucy Trelaine, she just had to be!
There were no MacAlpins in the phone book, either. Lucy started to flip to “McAlpin,” but stopped after a few pages.
The inscription on the brooch left no question about the spelling of her middle name. If it was hers at all.
Lucy looked at her watch. It was a little past eight. She was so famished that even the menu at the hotel coffee shop—seventeen-dollar flounder and twelve-dollar meatloaf—looked good. There was something she had to do before she could eat, however.
Lucy picked up the phone. The hotel would probably charge her fifty cents per call, but she didn't care. The chances that Cicarillo's sister would still be in Brooklyn were slim, Lucy knew, but she had to try. She dialed Brooklyn information.
“Do you have anything for a Theresa or Stephen Iatoni, I-A-T-O-N-I?” she asked, opening the drapes and revealing a grimy view of a brick wall.
“There are five listings under I-A-T-O-N-I,” replied the operator, “but nothing listed under the name Theresa or Stephen.”
Lucy took all the numbers and started calling. To her surprise she hit pay dirt on the third call, the listing for Iatoni, Alphonse. A deep female voice answered.
“Hello?”
“I'm trying to get in touch with Theresa Iatoni,” said Lucy. “I'm wondering if you might be related to her.”
“Yeah, sure. She's my sister-in-law. Lives on the island.”
“The island?”
“Long Island. Amityville.”
Lucy couldn't believe it had been so easy. “Might I trouble you for the number?”
“Who you say you were?”
“My name's Lucy Trelaine. I … I think I might be related to her.”
“Yeah?”
“To her brother, actually. I suppose I can get the number out of the phone book … .”
“I didn't know she had a brother.”
“He's dead.”
“Well, I guess you're okay. Wait a sec. I can never remember the number.” The woman returned to the phone after a minute and read Lucy the number.
“Thanks very much,” said Lucy, wondering what she was going to say to Theresa Iatoni. Would the woman even talk to her? After all, this was somebody who had wanted nothing to do with her thirty years ago when she was a helpless, newly orphaned baby. Her brother had been driving the car, but Theresa Iatoni had let Lucy's mother be buried in a pauper's grave.
“You know she's in California visiting the grandkids, right?” said the raspy voice in the receiver. “They don't got winter there. Ain't natural.”
“California?” said Lucy, biting her lip.
“Yeah. 'Til the first. You want the number out there?”
Lucy's heart sank. The first of May was nearly a month away! She supposed she could call Theresa Iatoni in California, but how likely would it be for the woman to open up over the phone in a house full of surfer grandchildren? No, Lucy had to see the woman in person.
“I think I'll try her when she gets back. And if you happen to talk to her, don't mention I called, okay? I want it to be a surprise.”
“Sure, no problem.”
Lucy replaced the receiver in its cradle and stood up, wondering if coming to New York had been such a good idea. Fantasies of finding her family had helped Lucy through some tough, lonely times. Did she really want to find out the truth? She might be just an illegitimate Cicarillo whose own aunt had abandoned her.
Outside, a symphony of sirens, garbage trucks, and what sounded like gunfire rose from the streets. Lucy's stomach rumbled like thunder, but something inside her relaxed. She had made her decision.
Whatever the truth was, Lucy was going to find it. She had to know who she really was.

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