Ask for Me Tomorrow

“P.S. It’s terribly important for me to make good on this not just for me personally but for the boy. Unless I leave him provided for Pablo is in for a hard time. He was born crippled. You were right not to want children by me. I have rotten blood...”

For a minute neither of them spoke. The room seemed to be silenced by the ghosts of a long-gone man, a crippled child, a dream. Then Gilly said, “He not only had rotten blood, he had rotten judgment. I didn’t send him a nickel.”

“Did you answer his letter?”

“No. He didn’t want an answer. He wanted the right answer and I wasn’t prepared to give it to him. Sure, I’ve often felt guilty about it. After all, every cent I own was his to begin with.”

“What happened to Jenlock Haciendas?”

“I don’t know. Once in a while I’d look in the real-estate section of the Los Angeles Times and occasionally I’d buy a San Diego paper, but I never found any mention of Jenlock Haciendas or Bahía de Ballenas. That doesn’t prove anything, of course. He may have gotten the money from some place else and the project is a big success. It’s possible, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“So I’m hiring you to go down and see. Hell, maybe he’s struck it rich and I’ll touch him for a hundred thousand dollars.”

“You must consider other possibilities, Mrs. Decker. He may have left there by now. Or he may be dead.”

“In either case I want to know. I also want to know what’s happened to the boy.”

So that’s it, Aragon thought, the kid. She’s rich and getting old, she has no relatives and pretty soon when Decker dies she’ll be alone. A kid would bring life to the house again.

She said, “He’s half Mexican, sure, but he’s also half B. J., which makes him sort of related to me. Doesn’t it?”

“Not legally, no.”

“Who cares about the law? I’m talking about feelings.”

“All right. Feeling-wise, he’s sort of related to you. But please bear in mind that he has a mother and that Mexicans are very much family-oriented. There’s also the possibility that the child may be dead, depending, among other things, on the degree of his congenital impairment. I realize that you’re living under great stress right now, and people in such circumstances sometimes make plans based on an unrealistic assessment of the facts.”

“You realize that, eh? Well, I realize that lawyers often like to use twenty words when one will do.”

“How about two?”

“All right.”

“Cool it.”

“What does that mean exactly?”

“Even if I find the kid he won’t be for sale.”

She looked almost stunned for a moment. “Perhaps we should go back to the twenty-word system.”

“It has certain advantages.”

“Your style takes a little getting used to, Aragon, but then, so does mine. We might be able to work together satisfactorily. What do you think?”

“I don’t pick the clients,” Aragon said. “They have to pick me.”

“Okay... I pick you.”

“Fine.”

She had a check ready for him, $2,500 made out to Tomas Aragon and marked “Legal Services.”

“This should cover your airfare, car rental, living expenses, and of course, bribes. If anyone asks you, you can say you work for the local police. They may not believe you but they’ll believe the money. Are you familiar with Baja California?”

“I’ve been to Tijuana.”

“Then the answer is no. I’ve done a little research on my own. You can fly down as far as Rio Seco and rent a car there. It has the last car-rental agency until the southernmost tip of Baja. Bahía de Ballenas is roughly halfway between. It’s not marked on most maps. Just keep driving south until you come to it. There’s a new road that goes part of the way along the coast. They call it a highway but you’d better not expect too much.”

Aragon put the check in his wallet and then returned the letter from B. J. to its envelope. “Do you mind if I keep this for a while? The references might be useful.”

“Take it. By the way, let’s get something clear. I could hire any investigator for a job like this a lot cheaper than you’re going to cost me.”

“Why don’t you?”

“I’m paying for discretion, for the privacy of a lawyer-client relationship. You’re not to tell anyone the nature of our business, not Smedler, not the authorities, not even your wife. Do you have a wife?”

“Yes. I haven’t been seeing much of her, though. She’s in her first year of residency in pediatrics at a hospital in San Francisco.”

“Smart, eh?”

“Yes.”

“What’s her name?”

“Laurie Macgregor.”

“Why didn’t she take your name?”

“She already had one of her own.”

“All very modern and with it. I see... I bet she’s pretty.”

“I think so.”

“Describe her, nonlawyer style.”

“Nonlawyer style, she’s a dynamite chick.”

Gilly was staring pensively at her image in the copper hood of the barbecue pit. “I wonder, if I were in my twenties again, would anyone call me a dynamite chick?”