The Sirena Quest

by Michael A. Kahn

  “I can’t fucking believe this,” Ray said.

  Lou asked the clerk, “Do you suggest we start by checking the probate judge’s clerk to see if she has the Marshall file?”

  The assistant probate court clerk nodded solemnly, ignoring Ray’s outburst. “That would be a prudent first step, counselor.”

  Thirty minutes later they were back in the Office of the Clerk of the Probate Division. This time the assistant probate court clerk they drew was a fat middle-aged black woman with reading glasses that hung from her neck on a gold chain that rested on an ample bosom.

  “Where else could it be?” Lou asked her.

  She raised her eyebrows and glanced to her right. “I suppose it could be in the refile bin, honey. We’re just a little behind.”

  They leaned over the counter to see where the clerk had glanced. At the far end of the room behind the counter was a large canvas bin filled to the top with court files. Dozens and dozens of court files, piled helter-skelter.

  “When will those be refiled?” Gordie asked.

  She shook her head. “We been real busy down here since March, honey. We might get to them, oh, maybe next month.”

  “Next month?” Ray repeated, incredulous.

  She shrugged. “This is Cook County, child.”

  Lou asked her to wait a second while he walked the other three over to one of the reading tables. Then he went back to her. After ten minutes of good-natured wheedling, she agreed to look through the refile bin for the probate court file in In re Estate of Graham Anderson Marshall III.

  They waited at a table while she sorted through the files.

  “Look at that dude.” Gordie nodded toward a clerk who was approaching the counter carrying a court file.

  He was a skinny white guy in a fat brown tie and a wrinkled beige short-sleeve shirt that was at least two sizes too large and ballooned over his black pants, which were belted so high on his waist that his hips looked like they were fused to his rib cage. They watched as he handed the file across the counter to an attorney.

  “Keep your eye on him,” Gordie said.

  The skinny clerk moved deliberately, almost mechanically, down the counter toward a manual pencil sharpener bolted to the wall at the end. He was still holding the slip of paper with the court file number. Slowly, carefully, he crumpled the slip of paper, pressed it against the pencil sharpener and cranked the handle several times. Then he stuffed the wad into his bulging shirt pocket.

  “I’ve been watching him,” Gordie said. “He does that every time.”

  Ray said, “No doubt he’s a blood relative of a precinct captain. It’s a fucking halfway house in here.”

  The female clerk returned to the counter with a big smile.

  “Look what I found,” she said, holding two thick brown accordion file jackets.

  Lou went up to the counter and handed her the check-out card.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “You’re welcome, honey.” She handed him the two file jackets.

  He started to turn and paused. “Do you know who last checked these out?”

  “Hmmm, let me see.” She reached across the counter and ran her finger down an index card stapled to the side of one of the file jackets. She tilted her head to read the information.

  “That was just four days ago,” she said, more to herself. “I’ll go look it up.”

  Lou returned to the table and handed one of the file jackets to Billy and sat down with the other. Gordie moved next to Billy, and Ray slid his chair alongside Lou.

  “There’ll be lots of court documents,” Lou explained. “Ignore them. Look for Marshall’s papers—his will, any codicils, letters from him, instructions for his executor, references to other estate planning documents. Stuff before he died.”

  Twenty minutes later, Ray whistled softly and held up a legal-sized document. “This is some weird shit.”

  “What’s that?” Lou asked.

  Ray flipped back to the cover page. “Codicil A to the Last Will and Testament of Graham Anderson Marshall.”

  “What about it?” Lou asked.

  “It sets up a trust fund—a forty-thousand-dollar trust fund—for the care and maintenance of—you ready for this?—a grave at a pet cemetery.”

  “Whoa,” Gordie said. “What’s the pet’s name?”

  “Canaan.”

  “Who?” Bronco Billy asked.

  Ray gestured at the document and shrugged. “Canaan.”

  “A pet cemetery?” Gordie reached for the codicil. “The guy set up a trust fund for a pet’s grave?”

  Gordie studied the document.

  “Canaan could be a cover,” Lou said.

  Fifteen minutes later Billy leaned back in his chair. “I think I found her.”

  The other three looked up from their documents. Billy was holding a legal-sized document about thirty pages long.

  “Her?” Lou asked softly.

  Billy smiled. “Has to be.”

  They all leaned forward.

  Billy placed the document on the table. “His Last Will and Testament.”

  He waited as an attorney passed by their table toward the copy machine. Then he opened the document to a page in the middle.

  “Article Fifteen.” He looked down at the page. “Here. It’s in his bequest to Barrett College.”

  “Read it,” Ray said.

  Billy looked around to make sure no one else was paying attention. He leaned forward, his voice low. “It says he gives, devises, bequeaths, et cetera the sum of three hundred thousand dollars—quote—‘to Barrett College, whose most captivating and captivated first lady now resides where the sultan pointed on October first’—close quote.”

  They were silent for a moment.

  “Damn,” Ray finally said, “that’s her.”

  “Read that again,” Lou said.

  Billy did, slowly.

  Ray was beaming. “We found her, boys.”

  “We did?” Gordie asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Where is she?” Gordie asked.

  “Wherever that fucking sultan pointed,” Ray said.

  “Okay,” Gordie said. “And where exactly would that be?”

  Ray gave him an annoyed look. “We’ll find out.”

  “Which sultan?” Billy asked.

  “We’ll find that out, too,” Ray said.

  “How?” Gordie said.

  Ray leaned back in his chair with a frown. “We’ll figure something out.”

  “It shouldn’t be that hard.” Lou lowered his voice. “She disappeared in June of 1959. What’s the date on Marshall’s will?”

  Billy flipped to the last page. “The sixth of October, 1984.”

  Lou did the calculation. “That means there are…twenty-six October firsts between the time Sirena disappeared and the date of his will. Whoever this sultan is, he must have been famous enough—or the place he pointed to must have been famous enough—to get reported in the newspaper.”

  “Why do you say that?” Billy asked.

  Lou said, “Remember what Gabe Pollack told us? Marshall would want to make sure that he got credit for hiding the statue. What’s the best way to do that? By telling people where he hid it.” Lou pointed at the will. “This is Marshall’s evidence. That’s why there has to be a newspaper article about that sultan.”

  Billy looked confused. “Why?”

  “Because,” Lou said, “if there’s no public record of the event, it becomes an impossible clue. If you can’t solve the clue, Marshall doesn’t prove that he was the one who hid her.”

  Gordie nodded. “So we need to check the newspapers for each October first from 1959 to 1982.”

  “Actually,” Lou said, “we want the October second issues. “If our sultan pointed on October first, it wou
ldn’t appear in the newspaper until the following day.”

  Ray stood up. “Then let’s get over to the library.”

  “Sir? Excuse me?”

  Lou turned. It was the assistant clerk who had found the file for them. She was holding up a filing card. Lou walked over to the counter.

  “Here’s that check-out list for the Marshall file.” She scanned both sides. “Mostly Chicago lawyers. And here—” she pointed to a name “—this gentlemen writes for the Sun-Times.”

  “When was that?” Lou asked.

  “That was almost three years ago. No one’s asked for the file since then, until four days ago. And then you today.”

  “Who asked for it four days ago?”

  She squinted at the card. “Har…no, Henry…Wash, uh—”

  “Washburn?”

  “That’s it. Henry Washburn.”

  Lou groaned.

  Ray groaned. “Shit.”

  “It could be anyone,” Gordie said.

  Ray turned to Gordie, his face grim. “It’s them,” he said.

  “Who?” Billy asked.

  “Frank and Reggie,” Lou said.

  Billy’s eyes widened. “Frank and Reggie? How do you know?”

  Ray said, “They were at the nursing home in St. Louis. They saw his sister. They probably read the same damn letter. That means we’re not the only ones who know Marshall hid her.” He banged his fist against his thigh. “Fucking preppies.”

  “Come on, then,” Gordie said. “Let’s get over to the library and find the article.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lou rewound the last reel of microfilm—the one containing all issues of the New York Times for the first ten days of October, 1959.

  He shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

  They were in the library of the Northwestern Law School. Lou and Gordie were seated at one reader, and Ray and Billy were at the other. More than a dozen reels of microfilm were piled between the two microfilm readers.

  They’d been at it now for nearly three hours, reading every October second issue of the Chicago Tribune and New York Times from 1959 to 1984, along with all October issues of Time magazine for the same period.

  Fifteen sultans had made the news over the course of those twenty-five Octobers. They’d delivered speeches, hosted world leaders, bought expensive diamonds, died in private plane crashes, sold oil, bought mansions in Beverly Hills, had their heads lopped off by revolting subjects, lopped off the heads of revolting subjects, and donated millions to charity. One of them—His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah, the Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam—even shook hands with Mayor Richard M. Daley and members of his staff in City Hall on October 1, 1973. Time quoted his Hizzoner’s quintessential Chicago introductions: “Sultan, dese are da boys. Boys, say hi to da Sultan.”

  But in all those years—in all those articles and all those photographs—not one of those sultans pointed at anything. Or at least not in the presence of a reporter or photographer.

  The thrill of anticipation they’d felt as Billy threaded that first reel of microfilm into the machine three hours ago had long since fizzled.

  “We must be missing something here,” Ray said.

  Gordie said, “Maybe we’re looking at the wrong newspapers. What if it was reported in the L.A. Times, or the Boston Globe?”

  “What if it was only reported in a foreign paper?” Billy added.

  “Damn,” Gordie said, shaking his head. “I just thought of something.”

  Billy stifled a yawn. “What?”

  “You remember that New York Times article a month ago, the one on the hunt for Sirena?”

  They nodded.

  Gordie looked around at them. “It mentioned all the different places where people are searching for her.”

  “So?” Ray said.

  “It said there was a crew from the Class of Sixty-eight heading for Egypt.”

  Gordie paused. No one said anything.

  “Get it?” he asked. “Egypt? Sultans? They must have had a good reason to head over there.”

  “Shit.” Ray pushed away from the table and stood up. “I need a drink.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lou called home from a pay phone in the bar back near the restrooms. He knew that Katie had her big math test that day and that Kenny had a ball game that night. Although conditions were hardly optimal for a long-distance family conversation—the noise in the bar was approaching airport-runway decibel levels—this would be his only chance tonight. It was already almost ten. He wouldn’t be back to the hotel until after midnight. He missed his children and needed to hear their voices.

  Both were home and still awake. He got to hear all their news, even though they had to shout for him to hear. Kenny went first, then Katie.

  “I’ll call tomorrow night, peanut,” he told her when she was done filling him in on the day’s events. “From a quieter place. I love you.”

  “Love you, too, Daddy. So?”

  “So?”

  “Are you getting warmer?”

  He smiled. “I think so.”

  “You going to find her?”

  “Hard to say.”

  “You having fun, Daddy?”

  Lou smiled. “I guess so.”

  “Good. Go for it, Daddy. We love you.”

  He smiled as he hung up.

  Turning toward the crowded bar, he repeated his daughter’s words aloud. “Go for it, Daddy.”

  The James Gang was down to three for the rest of the night. Bronco Billy had called his wife from a pay phone at the law library. The strained conversation—tense whispers on Billy’s end—lasted five minutes. Billy replaced the receiver, his shoulders hunched. They said good-bye to him outside the library before they caught a cab to the bar. They pretended not to notice his embarrassment.

  From across the room, Lou watched as Ray and Gordie flirted with the waitress. Ray poured the last of the pitcher of beer into Gordie’s mug and signaled for another one—a gesture right out of freshman year. All those nights at Pete’s Fine Pizzas and Grinders, with Ray pouring the last of a pitcher into one of their mugs and signaling for another.

  Well, Lou said to himself, Ray was definitely going for it.

  Ray had wanted them all back together again for his quest—back together like they once were. A return to the past, if just for these few days together.

  Lou wanted that, too, but it was complicated. You couldn’t just surrender to nostalgia. Not when there were children and clients and a mortgage and future college tuitions summoning you back to the present. Today alone he’d checked his voice mail twice, returned a couple of client calls, and spent ten minutes on the phone with Brenda giving her a new research project on an idea for the Donohue appeal that had popped into his head at two in the morning.

  Twenty years was a lot of years, he thought as he watched Gordie and Ray through the smoky haze of the bar. So much had happened since college. To each of them. Bronco Billy—good Lord, look how much had happened to him since college. To Gordie, too—those bleak years in Hollywood, tainted with the copper taste of failure. And Ray.

  Death had changed things as well. Irreversibly.

  Gordie’s father was dead. Stanley Cohen—a diminutive, slightly stooped, balding accountant with a bushy mustache and a wonderful smile who loved to tell zippy little jokes in his rapid-fire, Borscht-Belt delivery. Hey, Lou, he said during Lou’s visit with Gordie’s family over one of the holidays, they just opened a new Chinese German restaurant over on Dempster. Food’s not bad—pause two beats—but an hour later you’re hungry for power.

  Lou smiled. You could almost hear the snare drum riff in the background—ra-ta-boom—and then Stanley Cohen chuckled and repeated the punchline. Food’s not bad, but an hour later you’re hungry for po
wer. More chuckles.

  Both of Ray’s parents were dead.

  “I’m an orphan,” Ray had told him last year with a sad smile.

  Lou remembered Ray’s parents so clearly from the time he had spent a weekend at Ray’s house in Pittsburgh on his drive home at the end of freshman year. His father had seemed so young and vigorous, his mother weary but good-natured. Lou had joined the eight members of the Gorman family around the roughhewn dinner table that Ray’s father had made in his basement shop. Ray’s father died of a heart attack at the steel mill—dead before the ambulance arrived. Six months later, his mother died of liver cancer, quickly and painfully and quietly.

  Billy, too, had been touched by death. His younger brother Robert had been killed in a car crash three years ago. Lou had met Robert at Barrett during the spring of his freshman year when he’d come up to visit his big brother. He was in eighth grade at the time—an extremely polite, formal boy with a slight stammer. And now he was dead.

  And death had visited Lou as well. He frowned, staring down at the floor.

  Not now, he told himself. Not now.

  Gordie looked up as Lou rejoined them. “So? How’re the kids?”

  “Good. Katie thinks she aced her math test. Kenny hit the game-winning double.”

  Gordie pumped his fist. “Way to go, Kenny Ballgames.”

  The waitress set down their second pitcher of beer and another order of guacamole and tortilla chips.

  Ray took a sip of beer and shook his head. “We’re missing something here. There’s got to be a way to figure this out.”

  Lou dipped a tortilla chip in the guacamole and ate it. “What do we know?” he said. “We know our sultan never made it into the Chicago Tribune or New York Times.”

  Gordie groaned. “Don’t even think what that could mean. We’d have to read through newspapers from around the country, or even the world, for chrissakes.”

  Lou crunched on a chip. “Worse yet, it might not even be in a newspaper. Or even in this century. We could be dealing with a mythical sultan. Like the one in Aladdin.”

  They sipped their beers in silence.

  Gordie said, “Maybe it’s got something to do with that crazy codicil with the animal cemetery. What was the pet’s name?”