Winter Tides (15 page)

“So you ended up with ten bucks for all that work?”

“I should have asked for more money up front, but I figured that a man driving a car like that wouldn’t be so damn cheap. I admit I was stupid, but I’m goddamned if it don’t piss me off anyway.”

“I don’t blame you. You simulated his father?”

“You’re damn straight I did. I signed the man’s name. He couldn’t have got just anyone to do it, either—not somebody that looked like the picture on the driver’s license.”

“And you want to ask him for more money?”

“That’s why I’m here. I ended up with ten bucks, minus refreshments, and half my day down the drain. Don’t get me wrong, if I didn’t need the money, I wouldn’t ask. But I do need it. I’ve got some debts.” He put the chicken carton down, picked up a napkin, and wiped his face. “Maybe you could loan me five? I’ll pay you back after I talk to your friend.”

“He’s not my friend,” Dave said, taking out his wallet. He pulled out a five-dollar bill and handed it over. “He won’t give you any more money. That’s a cold fact.”

“He live around here?”

“Seaview Condominiums up on Seventeenth.” Immediately he wished he hadn’t said anything. Not that he wanted to protect Edmund, but it might easily turn out badly for the old man. Edmund wouldn’t wait ten seconds to call the police … unless the police were a threat to him, because of having the old man “simulate his father.” In any case, it was better if Mayhew got used to the ten dollars and didn’t push for more. “How much do you figure he owes you?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Twice what he paid me. If I would have got back here with thirty bucks, I wouldn’t bother the man. I’d be happy.”

Dave thought it over for a long minute. “I wouldn’t think about asking him for any more money,” he said. “I happen to think he’s dangerous. He’s also cheap as hell, as you already know. You don’t want a fight over this, and you sure don’t want the police involved. So here’s what I’ll do. I’ll give you another twenty right now, and then you don’t have to bother with him. That’s thirty-five you’ll make, not counting the cab money.”

“You don’t owe me anything, son.”

“It doesn’t hurt me a bit. And if I can find a way to get it back out of Dalton, I’ll get it back.” Dave found another twenty in his wallet, gave it to the old man, and then walked out through the door with him, into the lot.

“I’ll pay this back,” Mayhew said. He shook his head.

“That goddamn punk.”

“Take my word for it,” Dave said. “You don’t want to bother Dalton for any more money.”

“The day I can’t handle a punk like that …”

“Well, what I mean is it’s pointless.”

“He’s a king hell cheapskate,” Mayhew said.

“The absolute king.”

“Well, he cheated the wrong man this time.”

“I’m glad I could take care of the problem, then,” Dave said uneasily. Somehow this wasn’t sinking in. When the old man walked away, it was west up 6th Street. Dave watched him until he disappeared in the fog, and then went inside to eat what was left of the cold food.

T
HERE WAS ONLY ONE NOTARY ON
B
EACH NORTH OF
T
ALBERT
, at least for six blocks or so. Dave drove up and down three times, pulling into strip malls back off the highway to check small offices hidden by fast-food restaurants, parked trucks, and vendors set up along the boulevard. Unless Red Mayhew had remembered it wrong, Right Now Notary had to be the place. There was a Laundromat and a liquor store next door to the notary, and Dave pulled into a slot midway between the two of them and shut off the engine.

He had thought about Mayhew last night for a while before he’d gotten to sleep, and had concluded a couple of things. First, he wasn’t going to say anything at all to Edmund about the old man coming past the Earl’s. By itself, it wasn’t worth anything—there was no ammunition in it. In fact, it would strike Edmund as hilarious, Dave’s giving
him twenty-five bucks. Second, any way Dave looked at it, Edmund had hired old Mayhew in order to pull off some kind of scam. What was it?

Last night, some time past eleven, Dave had waked up a notary friend of his who lived in Santa Ana in order to ask her what she thought. “Fake quitclaim signature,” she had told him. She hadn’t even had to think about it. Edmund, she’d said, had probably been transferring some kind of property—a car or a piece of real estate—and Mayhew had acted the part of the owner of the property, because the real owner didn’t know anything about it.

Dave got out of the car now, looking at the front of the liquor store, which was apparently barred at night with a sliding wrought iron gate. Graffiti had been sprayed through the half-closed gate onto the stucco behind it, and the writing on the wall had a sort of waffle effect to it now that the gate was fully closed. The entire strip center needed help. Someone had emptied an ashtray onto the weathered asphalt of the parking lot, and the little painted brick planters along the fronts of the three stores were choked with overgrown Bermuda grass and liquor store trash. He walked up past the Laundromat, still unable to work out anything good to say to the notary. He wouldn’t get anywhere making vague threats or allegations. There was a good possibility that the notary didn’t even realize he had been scammed. If he was involved in the scam himself, then why would Edmund bring in Mayhew to fool him? Maybe he would take Dave’s information as a favor.

Through the plate glass window of the office, Dave could see a man hunched over a desk, working at a pile of forms with a pencil and a calculator. He was probably fifty-something, bald on top, and his short-sleeved white dress shirt had ink stains on the pocket. The aluminum door frame scraped on the linoleum floor when Dave pushed it open, and a buzzer went off briefly. The man looked up, nodded, and gestured at an empty office chair.

“What can I do you for?” he asked.

“Notary information,” Dave said, sitting down. There were diplomas and certificates hanging on the wall in dime-store frames, and the place smelled like old ashtrays and overcooked coffee.

“Go ahead. First five minutes free.”

“it’s not a complicated question. Just hypothetical.”

“That’s the best kind. The answer doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.”

“Let’s say a person wants to get a quitclaim deed notarized.”

“Let’s say he does.”

“But the owner of the property, whatever it is, can’t sign the deed.”

“Why can’t he sign the deed?” The man set his pencil down and leaned back in his chair.

“He’s dead, say.”

“What’s he doing owning property if he’s dead? Acreage in heaven?”

“He just died yesterday. Family’s in the middle of squaring away his estate, and he dies on them before they can get all the papers signed, and now the property’s going to be hung up in probate.”

“And they want to fake the date and the signature and have it notarized?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s fraud, hypothetically speaking.”

“But it’s done, isn’t it?”

“Everything’s done, if you find the right person to do it.”

Dave stared at him for a moment, looking as dead serious as he could.
What the hell
… he thought, and he asked,

“Are you the right person?”

The man looked at him, frowning and apparently puzzled. “Am I the right person to what? To commit fraud?”

“Hypothetically,” Dave said weakly.
What a mistake …

“That’s a hell of a question, Mr.—what was your name again?”

“Jones,” Dave said without thinking.

“Jones what?”

“Jim … Jim Jones.” He knew at once what he had said. The charade was over, whatever it had been. He wouldn’t recover from that kind of stupidity.

“Well, I’ll be damned. I’m Ray Mifflin, Mr. Jones.” He broke into a smile, knocked a cigarette out of a pack of Marlboros and lit it with a throwaway lighter, then sucked down a big lungful of smoke and blew it toward the ceiling. He hunched forward now, looked around warily, and said, “I heard you were dead down in South America somewhere.”

Dave thought about pretending that the name had been a joke, but decided to try to brass it out instead. “It’s a fairly common name,” he said.

Mifflin stared at him, grinning faintly. “I bet it
is
a common name. You must get a little tired of the jokes when the Kool-Aid comes out of the cupboard.” He leaned forward again, picked up his pencil, and punched calculator buttons with the eraser.

“Look …” Dave started to say.

“Why don’t you just tell me what you want, son?” Mifflin swiveled around in his chair and poured himself a cup of coffee, then rocked back and waited. “You can keep it as hypothetical as you want to.”

“I believe you’ve done some business recently with a man named Edmund Dalton,” Dave said. “I’m not going to tell you how I know this, but I have reason to believe that the quit claim deed you notarized for him had a false signature on it and that the old man who claimed to be his father was not his father.”

“Hypothetically speaking?”

“Entirely hypothetical.”

“And you’re offended by this hypothetical crime?”

“Actually, I don’t see much wrong with backdating a document. I don’t have any problem with forgery, either, if the alternative’s a worse crime.”

“That’s very philosophical of you.”

“It’s just that in this case there are complications.”

“What complications are those, Mr. Jones?”

“Well … I can tell you that there’s a good chance that Mr. Dalton probably doesn’t have any legitimate claim to any property owned by his father.”

“And how would you know? Just a hunch?”

“His brother might have something to say about the disposition of their father’s property.”

“He might, if he has a brother.”

“He’s got a brother.”

Mifflin stubbed out the cigarette in an ashtray, and then sat and stared at the wall for a moment, obviously thinking things through. “Coffee, Mr. Jones?”

“No, thanks.”

“Look, I don’t mean to pry, but what the hell are you doing here? You’re not any kind of county official. You’re certainly no kind of cop. Let me make a calculated guess. You’re a disgruntled employee. You overheard somebody say something, or else you snooped around in somebody’s computer files and came up with some intriguing dirt.”

“Not exactly.”

“But something like that. So I ask myself, again, what the hell you’re doing here. You don’t want to screw
me
, because you don’t know me. So you must be looking to screw this hypothetical what’s-his-name.”

“Neither one,” Dave said, although he realized that what Mifflin said was true. What
else
was he intending to do?

“Okay, then you’re going to shake this man down. I don’t suppose you want to cut me in?”

“I’m not shaking anybody down.”

“Well … I believe you. You don’t seem like the type. But then I don’t get it. What is this, a friendly warning?”

“Not even that. A clarification, maybe.”

“A clarification. Well, I appreciate it. I’ll tell you what. If, hypothetically, I
was
involved in the kind of thing you’re talking about, I’d surely want to know. Because it could mean serious trouble for me. I hope you understand that.”

“it’s easy enough to understand.”

“So I thank you for the clarification. And I’ll just say one more thing. If you’re thinking of taking it any further than this, be
very
careful and very sure of yourself. This sort of accusation wouldn’t be taken lightly by anybody involved, including the authorities. Given what you tell me, there’s a father out there who would have to testify against his son, which he probably wouldn’t do. There’s a brother who would have to testify against his brother. There’s an
old man out there somewhere who’s forged a signature and who sure as hell didn’t know what kind of can of worms he was opening up, either for himself or for everyone else. And there’s a hypothetical notary who would have to convince powerful people that he was duped. And if he couldn’t convince people that he was duped, then …” The man spread his hands out and shrugged. “You understand what I’m talking about?”

“I didn’t mean to toss around allegations,” Dave said. “Obviously I didn’t have a very clear view of this whole thing.”

“This kind of thing is often way more complicated than it would appear to be to the man on the street.”

“I guess you’re right,” Dave said. “Just in case it gets any more complicated, take my phone number.” He wrote his home number on a Post-it pad that sat on the desk.

“You never know,” he said.

“That’s
true.” Mifflin picked up the note, folded it in half, and slipped it into his pocket protector with his pens.

“I thank you for coming in, actually. It’s been enlightening.” He put his hand out, and Dave shook it. “Pull the door shut when you go out, will you? it sticks on the floor.”

Dave went out through the door and headed for his car, feeling defeated somehow. At the same time, he was absolutely certain that he had hit the nail on the head. Edmund was stealing property from the Earl, which meant he was stealing from Casey. At least Mifflin knew that now. If he was the honest man that he seemed to be, he would get out from under it. There was something about his reaction, though, that had been a little too casual, a little too light. That didn’t incriminate him, but it was curious.

T
HE FOG SWEPT ACROSS THE BLUFFS İN WAVES, SO THAT
the highway appeared and disappeared in front of Anne’s Saturn like film going in and out of focus. At times it was so thick and gray that it threw the glare from the headlights back against the windshield, and she braked steadily, forced to creep along, watching the white line that defined the edge of the lane and the nearly invisible darkness of the undergrowth along the ocean side of the road. The message from Jane Potter on the answering machine made the trip worth-while, fog or no fog—or at least it would if she got into downtown Laguna alive. A man had bought six of her paintings late that afternoon—everything of hers that was hanging in the gallery. Jane had offered to discount them a thousand dollars because he was taking all five, but he had told her—a little haughtily, according to Jane—that he didn’t buy things on discount. And that was perfectly all right with Anne. Give the man his pride. Probably he didn’t clip coupons either.