The Father Hunt

"It might be better," I said, "for me to tell you first what I already know, or some of it. She was your wife's secretary from May nineteen forty-two untl your wife died. She lived here-and at your house in town. You kept her on. She stopped living with you in March nineteen forty-four, and I can't prove that you still kept her, with a different meaning for 'kept,' but there's no law against guessing, and we've only been on this five days." I got something from a pocket. "Here are two photographs of her, taken in nineteen forty-six, but she wasn't Carlotta Vaughn then, she was Elinor Denovo, and her daughter Amy was a year old. Take a look."

I offered them, but he didn't take them. He said, "Who's paying you, Goodwin? Just McCray? He's probably only the errand boy for them-he would be-but you must have their names. If I could prove conspiracy to defame… Would you like to pocket ten thousand dollars?"

"Not particularly. That's peanuts. Only last week I took home a box that contained two hundred and forty-four grand-and by the way, it had come from you." I put the photographs back in my pocket. "The checks you sent Elinor Denovo, formerly Carlotta Vaughn-"

"That's enough!" He was reacting. Not the eyes, but the voice. He fired those two words at me as if they were bullets. "This is ridiculous. The brainless idiots. You're expecting to show that I am the father of a girl named Amy, that her mother is the Carlotta Vaughn who once worked for my wife and me and is now known as Elinor Denovo. Is that correct?"

"That's obvious."

"When was this girl Amy born?"

"Two weeks before you sent the first check to Elinor Denovo. April twelfth, nineteen forty-five."

"Then she was conceived in the summer of nineteen forty-four. July, unless the birth was abnormally premature or delayed. I suppose you have a notebook. Get it out."

I wasn't subservient enough yet. I tapped my skull. "I file things here."

"File this. In late May nineteen forty-four I went to

England on a mission for the Production Allotment Board

to consult with Eisenhower's staff and the British. Seven

days after the landing in Normandy I flew to Cairo for

more consultations, and then to Italy. On July first I was

put to bed with pneumonia in an army hospital in Naples.

On July twenty-fourth I was still shaky and I was flown

to Marrakech to recuperate. My room in the villa was

the one Churchill had once occupied. On August twen

tieth I flew to London and was there until September