A Hopeless Case

by K. K. Beck

  “I understand you are some kind of a chanteuse.” He paused, and allowed a dubious look to cross his features. “You would then be free to return to Europe and pursue your career.”

  Jane was tempted to ask him whether he was crazy, or whether he just thought she was. Instead, she said, “Mr. Montcrieff, let me be frank. My present career leaves a lot to be desired. It is not steady, the pay is not very good, and while it used to be fun, it isn’t anymore. When I was widowed, my husband left me in bad financial shape, and I am afraid I was unprepared to make much of a living for myself.” She left out all the tedious details of Bernardo’s crooked manager, the disastrous devaluation of the Brazilian peso, and the fact that, as an American, getting a work permit had always been difficult in Europe.

  He would have asked why she hadn’t come home, and she wasn’t really sure, now that she thought about it, except that coming home had always seemed to represent defeat. After all, she’d left when she was nineteen with a view to leading an interesting life, never coming home. Sort of Jean Seberg in Godard’s Breathless, a savvy ex-patriate.

  She’d remembered Seattle as a relentlessly dull town, far away from anything else; but, walking to Montcrieff’s office this morning, she’d found it quite charming, full of espresso carts and window boxes with flowers and nice old architecture lovingly restored and interesting-looking people on the streets, and the New York Times on sale. Had she changed, or had Seattle changed? Both, she supposed.

  “I am here to find out exactly what Uncle Harold’s work is and how much money there is.”

  “Well into six figures, I’d say,” he replied. “Of course, it all depends on how it is invested and so forth. Should you choose to participate, you will receive the interest—after taxes and a few minor expenses.”

  “I see. How much return can I expect on it?”

  “Well into six figures,” repeated the lawyer. “I was speaking of the interest, Mrs. da Silva. Not the principle.”

  Jane nodded silently and tried not to look absolutely overjoyed. It wouldn’t do to clutch Mr. Montcrieff’s lapels, jump up and down, and shriek like some game-show contestant. “I would like to learn more about the Foundation for Righting Wrongs and what would be expected of me,” she said gravely.

  For that kind of money, she’d do anything. Well, practically anything. She imagined it meant getting on the phone and untangling little old ladies’ utility bills or finding out why the mail order merchandise they’d sent for hadn’t arrived. If she worked it right, it shouldn’t take more then twenty hours a week, max.

  “Very well,” said Mr. Montcrieff, opening his desk drawer. He produced a pair of binoculars and peered out the window.

  “I see a bird of prey out there. A hawk perhaps. Very interesting.” He strode eagerly over to the window. “It’s circling over the city. How fascinating.” Mr. Montcrieff’s face became animated for the first time since she had met him. “What prey has it spotted?” He put the binoculars to his eyes.

  “To think that, little over a century ago, downtown Seattle was teeming with wildlife. Deer of course, and raccoons and so forth. Otter. The beaver, its fur prized in Europe for the making of hats.”

  Jane walked over to him. “Tell me,” she said firmly, “what I have to do to get that money.”

  “I’m a little vague on that point.”

  Jane had already assumed that vagueness was Mr. Montcrieff’s habitual state. “How can we find out?” she said. “Someone must know.”

  “The trustees. They’re very anxious to meet you. I’ll turn you over to my nephew Bucky. He’ll handle this for you.” He squinted into the binoculars and rotated his head, presumably tracking the hawk in its flight.

  “Fine,” said Jane, grabbing her purse. “I’ll have your secretary arrange that, shall I?”

  “Good idea,” said Mr. Montcrieff, now leaning far to one side of the window. “It’s a red-tailed hawk if I’m not mistaken. Forgive me if I seem distracted, Mrs. da Silva.”

  She let herself out of his office, glancing over her shoulder to see him still plastered against the glass. Montcrieff’s eccentricity had given her pause. If he had drawn up the will, wasn’t it possible that it wouldn’t hold up? What if those charities contested the will? It sounded as though there was enough money to make it worthwhile to some nonprofit group. And after all, a lot of those organizations didn’t really do that much good. Just put on parties so all the women could make their husbands wear black tie.

  In the outer office, an efficient-looking secretary blitzed away on a keyboard. “Mr. Montcrieff wants me to meet with his nephew,” Jane explained.

  “Yes, I thought he would. I’ll take you to his office. He’s expecting you.” This sounded promising, Jane thought. As they left, she heard an intercom crackle. “Miriam, get me the Audubon Society on the line, would you?” Miriam rolled her eyes and kept walking.

  Bucky, whose name according to his door was actually George W. Montcrieff II, was a well-groomed, tanned, angular man in his thirties. He wore a very unlawyerly Italian suit and silk shirt. His slightly sharklike smile indicated that if his nickname had had anything to do with prominent teeth, orthodontia had corrected the problem.

  “Well hello,” he said, taking her hand and clasping it enthusiastically. He looked her up and down thoughtfully, then glanced at his wafer-thin wristwatch. “You know,” he said, “perhaps we could discuss this over lunch. There’s a great seafood place right on the corner. They’re usually crowded, but I’m sure they’ll have a table for me. Miriam, would you call down and tell them I’m on my way?”

  He took Jane’s elbow and glided her along to the reception area, where he leaned over to a young girl there. “Listen sweetheart, I’m expecting Calvin Mason in about twenty minutes. Send him down to McCormick’s, will you?”

  The girl nodded and they entered the elevator. As they went down to the lobby, Jane noticed Bucky’s expensive but overpowering cologne. The whole elevator smelled like a new issue of Vanity Fair.

  Seated in the restaurant, Bucky, unlike his uncle, came to the point and stayed there. “Well,” he said. “I imagine you’re anxious to find out just what the Foundation for Righting Wrongs does, and what part you are expected to play.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “I’d also like a copy of the will, which it seems to me I should have received by now, and some kind of a list of what Uncle Harold had. I’d like to know how much money there is and how it is invested.” Maybe the whole deal was crazy, but there was no point acting less than serious about it at this point. After all, there was all that fabulous money at stake.

  He nodded. “I’m so sorry we didn’t get you a copy of the will sooner. I’ll have my secretary get you copies of everything. For now, here’s a copy of a letter your uncle left you to read after his death.”

  She opened the envelope with a table knife and read:

  Dear Jane,

  I’m not sure you want to take on the task I’ve prepared for you, so I’ve made it worth your while. I feel you are well suited to continue my work after I am gone.

  I also believe, my dear (and I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but as I am not only your uncle, but your deceased uncle), that you ought to respect my views, that this work would be good for you and give you a sense of higher purpose that may have been lacking in your life.

  Since childhood, you have displayed a natural altruism with a native cleverness, and these qualities can be brought together to good purpose if you carry on the work of the Foundation for Righting Wrongs.

  My instructions to the trustees are very specific. The tasks you undertake must be difficult ones, for there is no real satisfaction, I have discovered, in anything that is too easy.

  I have chosen to indulge your love of luxury, another of your traits, Jane, and perhaps a less commendable one, in order that you will choose to take on the work; so that you will not be distracted from it by the need to earn a living; and because of my affection for you.

  I have no dou
bt that you will earn every cent of it, and that, if you discharge your duties faithfully, someday we may both be reunited in a world in which there is no Wrong, only Right.

  Love,

  Uncle Harold

  A hell of a deal, Jane thought rather tenderly. Big bucks, and my soul gets saved too. Uncle Harold had thought of everything. It was quite touching.

  She folded up the letter and said, “I hope to be worthy of the confidence my uncle has placed in me.”

  “I’ve met with the trustees,” said Bucky, “and it is my impression that they will hold you to your uncle’s high standards.”

  “You mean you think they will be difficult to please?”

  “Your uncle’s little enterprise,” Bucky said, with a smirk that seemed to indicate he thought Harold Mortenson was a fool, “is based on the idea that sometimes injustice must be overcome by herculean efforts.”

  “There is no real satisfaction,” quoted Jane, “in anything that is too easy.”

  “I suppose so,” he said dubiously.

  “Well I’m going to do my damnedest to make this thing work,” said Jane, half to herself.

  He looked at her thoughtfully. “I sure would. The income attached to it is pretty hefty. You could have a very pleasant life.”

  Jane smiled at his frankness. She also wondered what motivated it. Was he trying to let her know he was on her side? Or trying to get her to admit she was only after the money?

  “Anyway,” said Bucky, smiling back, then glancing at the wine list, “your biggest problem will be finding cases. Hopeless stuff. Nothing that can be solved by simple legal action or a letter to the newspapers.”

  So much for her theory that she’d be tracking down lost social security checks or missing pets.

  “I see,” she said.

  “I’ll set up a meeting for you with the trustees. If you’d like, I’ll go with you.”

  “I’m anxious to meet them as soon as possible,” she said. She didn’t really think she needed to take an overperfumed lawyer with her. She’d rather tackle the trustees alone.

  The waiter came over, and she put her elbows on the table and leaned toward Bucky, smiling. “Why don’t you order for me?” she said, managing to convey by her tone that she had complete confidence in his savoir faire.

  Until she had her hands on that money, signed, sealed and delivered, she’d be nice to everyone. The lawyers, the board, and whoever else was involved. After her position was secure, she looked forward to the most satisfying aspect of being rich: the ability to tell people, very nicely of course, for Jane believed in the old-fashioned virtue of civility, to fuck off whenever it pleased her.

  Chapter 3

  Calvin Mason walked into McCormick’s and scowled into the dim corner where Bucky was sitting. Calvin was in his mid-thirties, with untidy curly dark hair and horn-rimmed glasses. He had a purposeful but rather shambling gait, his body hanging from wide shoulders. He wore jeans and a light blue work shirt, and he carried a manila envelope and a black plastic videocassette box.

  Typical of Bucky, he thought to himself irritably. Makes me take the damned elevator all the way up to the seventieth floor for nothing. Two elevators, actually, because you had to transfer on the thirtieth floor, and listen to a snotty disembodied female voice call out the floor numbers accompanied by electronic chimes. And all the while, Bucky is sitting down here drinking white wine and eating oysters with some babe.

  He brushed aside the maître d’ and strode over to the table.

  “Oh, hello Cal,” said Bucky, smiling up at him. “What have you got for me?”

  “Just what you ordered.” Calvin looked at Bucky’s companion with curiosity. A little older and classier than Bucky’s usual type, she was wearing some kind of a nubby suit with gold buttons. It looked expensive and feminine. Probably some rich client he was hoping to lure into matrimony.

  Maybe she was the client in the divorce case he was working for Bucky. In that case, the contents of the tape he was delivering would be of real interest to her. It featured an amorous airline pilot and a saucy little flight attendant bouncing around on a creaking brass bed in a quaint little Victorian bed-and-breakfast in the San Juan Islands.

  Calvin was normally discreet, but Bucky had irritated him by not apologizing for making him take that elevator ride while the Toyota was parked next to a fire hydrant. And Bucky had said, “What have you got for me?” So Calvin expanded on his answer.

  “The place had those flimsy white curtains, so I only got them in silhouette, but the heavy panting on the audio comes through loud and clear, and we ID’d him all right. She calls out his name a couple of times. He just says ‘Oh, baby.’” He smirked. “On top of which, the dope parked his Z car right in front of the place. I got stills of it.”

  The lady’s eyebrows rose and she sipped her wine hastily, a maneuver that made him wonder if she wasn’t suppressing a laugh. Calvin smiled at her in a rather cocky, man-of-the-world way. If she was the client, it was clear she was more concerned with adding some big bucks to her settlement than with her husband’s low-budget fling in some mildewing Victorian pile in Friday Harbor.

  Bucky gave him a sharp look. “Thanks,” he said, snatching the cassette box. “I’ll call you.”

  Calvin flung the envelope down on the white tablecloth. “My report, the stills, and the invoice are here. Prompt remittance is appreciated.”

  He turned and left, brushing the maître d’ aside again on the way out.

  “A private detective we use sometimes,” said Bucky airily. “Unfortunately, we need someone like Calvin around once in a while when we’re obliged to take a more unsavory route in the practice of family law.” He frowned.

  “Yes, I’m sure you rely on the unsavory route only with the greatest reluctance,” she replied, smiling charmingly. “He certainly is colorful.” She glanced in the departing man’s direction.”

  “Kind of a sad case, really,” said Bucky, an expression of sympathy crossing his smooth brow. “He’s a lawyer. A sole practitioner who can’t make a go of it. He’s got a grungy little office with a Murphy bed and a framed diploma from Matchbook U.” Bucky shook his head sadly. “He fleshes out his meager collection of pathetic cases with some investigative work for respectable firms.

  “A good investigator, but not, as you might have noticed, very couth.” He gave a condescending chuckle and touched the knot of his paisley silk tie. “Still, he manages to make a respectable appearance in court when I need him to testify.

  “But enough about poor old Calvin Mason. I was filling you in on the details. The trustees have arranged for you to get an advance. You can use it to live on while you get settled in the work—should you choose to tackle it, of course.”

  “I do choose,” she said, slithering an oyster into her mouth.

  “Yes. Well, they’ve also decided you can stay in his house while you settle in. Should you come to an arrangement with the board, the house is part of the package. It’s an asset of the foundation.”

  She remembered the place, an old gloomy Craftsman-style house in a tangled garden up on Capitol Hill. There was a lot of dark woodwork inside, and leaded glass windows. Outside, it had the broad porch and deeply overhanging eaves that were standard for rainy Seattle.

  She wondered how much the advance was. She was anxious to get her Jaguar out of storage and have it shipped from London. It was all that was left of the life she’d had with Bernardo. The car was a classic. No matter how bad things got, she’d always managed to pay the storage fees.

  If the trustees decided she wasn’t up to Uncle Harold’s standards and wanted the advance back later, let them sue her for it. Maybe she could get a few good cashmere sweaters in basic colors—black, gray, and red. And white— white could always look dressy—and a Burberry trench, too, to set her up for the next ten years.

  “When can you give me the keys?” she said.

  “Right away. If you’d like, I’ll help you move in or whatever.”

&
nbsp; “That’s very kind of you, but it won’t be necessary,” she said, noting with disapproval that he’d eaten four of the half dozen oysters they’d ordered. What a jerk. She grabbed the last one on the plate hastily. “And I would appreciate it if you could arrange that board meeting as soon as possible.”

  “No problem. I’ll set it up for tomorrow. The old darlings haven’t got much else to do, as far as I can tell. They’re all well on in years.”

  “Oh really?”

  “Yes. All retired. Contemporaries of your uncle. Judge Potter and Professor Grunewald and the bishop.”

  “Bishop?”

  “Yes, an Episcopal bishop. Name of Barton.”

  “Oh. He christened me,” she said. “And he must have been ancient then. Practically dropped me, they tell me.”

  “If it was after lunch, the explanation is simple,” said Bucky, gazing significantly at his wineglass.

  “I see,” said Jane.

  “And my uncle, of course,” added Bucky. “He’s an ex officio member.”

  “I’ve already met him too,” said Jane with a forced smile. “Well, I certainly look forward to meeting the others.”

  After the waiter arrived with plates of salmon and then withdrew, Bucky leaned confidentially over the table. “The word is,” he said, “that the old boys plan to give you six weeks to come up with a really juicy case. They don’t think you can do it.”

  Jane couldn’t help but notice a certain relish in his tone. She decided to tackle him head-on. “You sound as if you think they want me to fail,” she said, with a smile designed to be disarming.

  Bucky smirked a little. “They’re very conservative and set in their ways. They’d never admit to themselves they’d want you to fail; but, let’s face it, a bunch of old guys like that, used to their old pal, Harold, well, they just aren’t going to take you as seriously. You’re female and comparatively young. And you’re new. Harold’s up and dying and your replacing him is bound to shake up their comfortable routine.”