The Father Hunt

"That's fine. Mr. Wolfe's is the Thirty-fourth Street branch and so is mine. We'll get twelve bank checks for twenty grand each, payable to you, and I'll have with me letters to twelve different savings banks in New York, ready for your signature, opening savings accounts. You'll endorse the bank checks and we'll enclose them in the letters. The interest will come to a thousand dollars a month, which is a nice coincidence. You'll deposit the remaining four grand in your account at the Continental."

She was frowning. "But… what will happen? How will I explain…?"

"You won't have to explain anything. If at some time in the future the Internal Revenue Service gets nosy and tries to hook you, you owe them nothing because it was gifts from your father, stretched out over twenty-two years, and Mr. Wolfe is sure that they'll have to lump it, and so am I. They couldn't claim it was used for your support because it wasn't, not a cent of it. If you stash it in a safe-deposit box and peel off twelve grand a year, it will last twenty years. If you do what we suggest, you'll get twelve grand a year and there will be no peeling off. And of course you could withdraw it any time and buy race horses or something."

She gave me a smile. "I'd like to think about it a little. I knew I could trust you. I'll decide before you go."

"Good. A question. Have there been any bank checks in the mail for your mother since she died? Either here or at the office?"

"No, not here. If there had been any at the office of course Mr. Thorne would have told me."

"Okay. I should mention that I no longer think it may take a year. A week may do it, or even less. Your mother made a mistake in that letter. If she didn't want you to find out who your father was, and obviously she didn't, she shouldn't have mentioned that it came in bank checks. There was and is a trail, there has to be, between those checks and the sender, and she probably cashed them at a bank, since they're centuries. Ten centuries every month. It must have been a bank, and probably her bank. We'll

find out Monday." I opened my notebook. "Now for questions, and some of them will be very personal."