Lost among the Dead and Dying

Happiness and heartache can be a breath apart. Pain can lead to joy almost as quickly as joy can sour to grief. I’ve experienced both. So in which direction am I now traveling? Heartwarming scenes are sometimes packed with half-truths masking ugly realities. So over the last few days, what have I been looking at? I’ll start with Colette.

Wide-eyed, ponytail flapping, the four-year-old broke from her mother and ran across the flagstone floor of the amphitheater, her feet barely keeping pace with her ambition. She was on a beeline for an old man. He sat in the first row of benches with his hands behind his back. Both the old man and the child were grinning as she skidded to a halt a foot from his knees. Her china-blue eyes matched the color of her dress and were riveted on the old man. Time had clouded the blue of his eyes, although they still seemed to sparkle, at least for the child.

Hands on her hips, she regarded him suspiciously, suppressing a giggle. Where is that Mister Tickle? she demanded.

Why, whoever do you mean?

You know! He is behind your back?

Miss Colette, you are the smartest. But watch out. He is out for you!

With that, a cane materialized in the old man’s hand. He held it low on the staff and waved it so that its handle—an ivory ball sculpted into the head of a smiling gnome—danced in the air between them.

Colette seemed mesmerized.

Tell him to behave! she demanded.

Too late! said the old man.

And with that, the gnome dove gently onto the child’s ribs, where he danced around before climbing to nibble at her neck. After a few seconds, Colette ran off a mess of giggles. But not as fast as she could have—just slow enough to allow the gnome to follow. Zigzagging, the child and old man traced a crazy pattern across the amphitheater floor. After a minute of this Mad Hatter chase, the girl stopped short, leaving the old man to execute a stumbling pirouette around her.

Colette put her hands on her hips and replaced her grin with the stern look her mother sometimes used on her. She spoke with all the authority she could muster.

My turn now. You just turn him over!

All right, young lady, said the old man.

With a tip of his hat and a formal bow, he handed the cane to her. Then he was off, tossing a challenge over his shoulder.

But the two of you will never catch me, he called with self-mocking bravado.

And off he tottered, as fast as he could, knowing Colette could easily keep pace.

The girl followed, poking the gnome’s head at the old man’s ribs. They were both laughing, completely delighted as they played slapstick comedians. But his old legs were not up to the game. They hadn’t gone far before the old man stumbled to the ground. The girl tripped over him, and they wound up a tangle of arms and legs. For a moment, both seemed stunned, worried that the old man might have injured himself. The girl’s mother came running.

To his pleasant surprise, the old man found he could move his arms and legs without pain. So he did. Lying on his back, he looked a little like a turtle trying to right itself. By the time the mother arrived to sort out the pieces, the old man and the girl were laughing again as if they had discovered a new game.

The mother shook her head. I don’t know which of you children to scold. Granddad, if you acted half your age, it would be an improvement.

Why would I ever do that? he asked with an impish smile. Colette, hide-and-seek?

The next day, I found the old man having dinner with another girl. This one was about thirty, beautiful and sultry with an Eastern Mediterranean air about her. Their affinity was no familial bond between generations. If not for his age, I’d have said it was sexual. If she was faking, she was good. He wasn’t faking anything. They dined at a leisurely pace, their tongues lingering on fingers and lips as if dinner was only prologue.

From time to time, people stopped at their table to say hello to one or the other or both. Each visit occasioned a round of smiles and a snippet of small talk before the visitor moved on. The pleasantries stopped when a man with a drinker’s ruddy complexion and belligerent personality stopped and spoke to the girl. She did not introduce him to the old man. Although she seemed a person not easily embarrassed, she recoiled from the visitor and wouldn’t meet the old man’s eyes. The man was mockingly insinuating that he and the girl had once been a couple, until he saw through her.

The old man had no patience for the intruder.

Enough! Leave us this second! he ordered with surprising intensity.

Lots of money, but a limp dick. She usually wants it all. I’ll leave when I’m ready, said the drunk, leaning over their table.

The old man had been sitting with his hands tucked under the edge of the table. Now his right hand exploded from below, propelling his cane in a swing that would have made Lou Gehrig proud. The gnome’s head crushed the visitor’s jaw. He collapsed onto the table, scattering the china and crystal.

To the old man, the fallen body signaled not an end to the confrontation but an easy target. He flailed at the younger man’s shoulders, each blow landing with a hollow thud. Droplets of blood spattered the sleeve of the old man’s dinner jacket. He stopped when the body slid from under his assault to the floor, where it lay motionless.

Waiters and patrons had watched, flabbergasted at the ferocity of the attack. Breathing hard, the old man came around the table and stood over the body, oblivious to onlookers. He spoke to the maître d’ with all the emotion of a Sunday jogger just finishing a good run.

Get us a new table. That one will do, he said, pointing.

He escorted the girl to the table he’d chosen and then wiped the blood from the gnome’s head with a crisp napkin. He could have been chalking a pool cue for a friendly game of nine-ball for all the concern he showed. Meanwhile, two waiters hauled away the injured man. Two busboys cleaned up the mess. The maître d’ worked the room, reassuring patrons with promises of complimentary champagne and desserts. But no one called the cops.

Years ago, when I first met the old man and he and I were young and came by sultry women honestly, I thought I understood him. Had he changed? Or had I missed something in 1927? His playfulness in the amphitheater hadn’t surprised me, but the brutality was new. I don’t know what to make of him or my feelings toward him, especially after what I learned last week. So many unanswered questions—some new, most old.

I’ve decided to write it all down. That’s what I’m doing right now: putting thoughts and memories to paper—actually, to a computer. The writing should help me sort it all out. When I’ve finished, I’ll confront him. I have a feeling I won’t be going home to die. But that will be my choice. At my age, I’m not complaining; having any option is better than having none.

But what a time it was, that long-ago summer when so much seemed possible . . .

Book One: Lost Girls

Chapter One

Tom Johnson’s mansion belonged in eighteenth-century England but was tucked in a forest about four miles from Findlay, a small town in northeast Ohio. The long driveway wound through the trees and eventually spilled onto an expansive manicured lawn. From a distance, the mansion’s walls shimmered in the June sun as if they were luminous silk. On closer inspection, they resolved into heavy stone that might have survived a hit from Big Bertha.

Maybe Johnson had been over there. The phrase was sometimes used by veterans to describe the war to end all wars. But for many of us who served, the war lingered like a wound that wouldn’t heal. So perhaps Johnson built the place to withstand the bombs and mortar shells that fell in his dreams. Or maybe he was showing off. Mine is bigger than yours, that kind of bullshit.

The day before I drove to Findlay, my boss called me into his office. The boss was Humphrey. We sometimes called him the Chief. Our offices were in Chicago’s Whitney Building. As usual, his desk was cluttered with reports from Pinkerton detectives, bodyguards, and thugs. We were all called agents. The detectives solved mysteries the cops couldn’t or wouldn’t. The bodyguards protected rich clients from enemies that were sometimes real, but often powerless. The thugs broke strikes.

There were stories galore about Humphrey, driven by the ugly scar on his forehead and his stature as the last employee who had worked with Allen Pinkerton, the agency’s founder. When Humphrey was a boy of thirteen, Pinkerton ordered him to infiltrate the Amalgamated Boilermakers. He did and wreaked havoc by sending out information that Pinkerton thugs converted to union blood. A dozen stories explained Humphrey’s scar, and a dozen more illustrated his prowess as a detective. He didn’t talk about himself, but as his contemporaries died or retired, his legend within the agency became second only to Pinkerton’s. By 1927, he was pushing sixty with the energy of a thirty-year-old and a septuagenarian’s irascibility. He’d been deskbound for thirteen years, paralyzed from the waist down by a striker’s bullet. He’d killed the shooter in an exchange of gunfire at the Ludlow mine in Colorado.

Now Humphrey was running the show, and he was free with advice. Agency lore had him cracking cases from his office, seeing solutions in the reports of agents who had missed the forest for the trees. He’d done it once with me. I’d collected the facts but missed their significance. Pointing a finger at my forehead, he lectured me.

Damn, boy, ya gotta find the relationships. Footwork is necessary, but the solutions are in the old noggin. The obvious ones, the simplest ones, are likely the best, but not always. So keep piling up facts and sorting ’em this way and that. Then eureka! The answer will jump right atcha, and you’ll feel like a damn retard for not seeing it sooner.

Behind his back, we called it the eureka theory of detection. We joked that it worked best when your fat ass was stuck in a wheelchair and you had the benefit of hindsight.

The boss and I talked baseball for a few minutes and concluded that 1927 would be a tough year for the White Sox while the Cubs would contend. After a little Yankee bashing, we turned to business. I was going to do a job for Tom Johnson. He was a tough guy who could be difficult. His company, American Fixture, was an important client. I knew the company name from the papers; it was having labor trouble.

Make the man happy, the boss warned.

American Fixture? Make him happy? I groused. You know damn well I’m no strikebreaker.

Settle down, boy. It’s a personal matter, not a union dispute. Whatever the problem is, it’s in Paris. Johnson wants an operative familiar with the city.

I’m no Paris expert.

I know. You never saw much of the city. Just a few days going in and a few more coming out.

The Chief laughed.

And you probably spent the time cooped up in a cathouse. But you speak French, and that’s better than the rest of my lug heads. You’ll get by. Tomorrow. His place. Here’s the address. Now amscray.

During the four-hour drive from Chicago to Findlay, I thought just how close Humphrey had been to the truth. Coming and going, it had been Madame Constantine’s. There, on my first night in Paris, I met Lucy. She wasn’t the first girl I’d been with, but she showed me the difference between a waltz and a tango. Those few days before Billy and I reached the front were wildly romantic. After all, we were about to participate in the war to end all wars. It doesn’t get better than that.

Like hundreds of others, we’d gone to France in 1916, almost a year before the United States officially joined the fight. Most of us went to drive ambulances. I went over with Billy Collins, my best friend. Where do sixteen-year-olds get such ideas?

I remember reading about the German onslaught. The war unfolded like a serialized novel on the front page of the Chicago Tribune. What really got me going was the battle for Paris in September of 1914. The Kaiser and General Moltke were the villains, and for a while, it looked like the Germans would take the city. Then as Paris was about to fall, the Miracle of the Marne happened. General Joffre was the French commander, but the taxi drivers of Paris were the heroes, driving thousands of reinforcements to the front. The Germans were stopped. But stalemate followed, leaving the City of Light in the shadow of the Hun. Ambulance work seemed like a noble adventure, coming to the rescue like the taxi drivers had. Nobody uses words like noble today. We did then and weren’t embarrassed.

The first weeks at the front were exhilarating. We faced death and did our duty. We saved lives. But as the weeks stretched to months, the lives we saved paled compared to the carnage. Worse yet, even the saved were mangled. Then Billy was killed. That’s when I stopped praying. There was so much to pray for I didn’t know where to begin. Besides, the people around me were praying like their lives depended on it, and they were dying like flies in the winter.

I stuck it out until the armistice. Then I went back to Paris to find Lucy. On the night I’d left for the front, we’d made promises. We knew they were lies, but they’d been fostered by kindness, mostly hers. I went back for the kindness. Romance and adventure had died in the trenches with the dreams of dead boys.

I found Lucy, but she didn’t recognize me. I’d changed, but it wasn’t my baggage. She looked at me from eyes that didn’t register. I should have searched for my Lucy behind those eyes, but I didn’t. I too was numb. Instead, Madame Constantine found me another Lucy whose face and name I have since forgotten.

Over the years, when the war has invaded my thoughts, I have tried to remember the days before the front when life was rich and clouds heralded only spring rains. Sometimes the trick would work. The images of war would dissolve into the foolishly wonderful anticipation of it. Mostly, the trick failed. The images were too deeply etched over too many runs to the front.

As I stepped from the car, a golden retriever bounded up with a friendly greeting. The dog tagged along as I crossed to the front door, which opened before I could knock. A tall man in a business suit with a ramrod spine greeted me.

Yes, he said, making the word sound very formal.

A butler? I had never seen one before but imagined they always came dressed like penguins. I introduced myself.

You are expected. Please come in.

He shooed the dog away and showed me in. I whistled at the entrance hall, which looked like an opera house lobby complete with a grand stairway that forked to different portions of a second-floor balcony.

The butler raised a disapproving eyebrow. Whistling may have been a hick response, but I was hardly embarrassed. After all, this was Ohio. Outside of a few ritzy neighborhoods in Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Akron where a handful of robber barons jousted for industrial supremacy, the state was more hayseed than high-hat.

Please follow me, he said, leading me into the east wing of the building.

Johnson’s study was about the size of a small basketball court. The front part of the room was dominated by a huge fireplace surrounded by oversized furniture. Johnson’s desk was at the far end of the room. Lots of rich wood and gorgeous rugs.

Come in. I’m Tom Johnson.

The voice carried from forty feet as if from five. Johnson didn’t stand to greet me but gave me a once-over like an officer evaluating a private. I waited him out. He finally offered me a chair. I’m six foot one, but in this chair, my feet barely touched the Persian rug below. I wasn’t used to feeling like a shrimp. Perhaps that was the point behind the massive furniture. We stared at each other across a desk the size of an aircraft carrier. Johnson was about the size of his desk.

He looked tired but sat straight. His suit was tailored perfectly but looked unnatural on his bulky frame. His tanned face and hands were those of a man who might have preferred a flannel shirt and gabardine pants. He stared at me without blinking. He gave the impression of reading my soul. A neat trick since I wasn’t sure I had one. I suppose the sizing-up routine was meant to intimidate.

I wasn’t much for games, so I smiled and asked how Pinkerton could help.

My daughter is lost and needs to come home.

That seemed like two problems. I took the easier first.

Where was she last seen?

She is in Paris.

If she’s lost, how do you know she’s in Paris?

She picks up her mail at the American Express office in Paris.

I don’t follow. If you know where she is, how is she lost?

I want you to deliver a letter to her. This letter.

Johnson opened a desk drawer and showed me an envelope on which Anne was written in script.

You’ve lost me. Why not just mail it to her at American Express?

I want you to be sure she reads it. Then you are to return her to me.

Return her?

She’s had enough time over there. I know how those bohemians live. I do not want her corrupted.

Corrupted?

And what if she doesn’t want to come home? I asked.

Just bring her home. Both you and Pinkerton will be well rewarded. There’s a five-thousand-dollar bonus in this for you.

That was a king’s ransom. But Pinkerton paid my salary, and I wasn’t a bounty hunter.

Kidnapping, even if well-intentioned, is illegal.

Don’t tell me what you can’t do. Just get it done. Now take my letter to Anne.

He extended the envelope to me.

No one is to read this but Anne. That includes you. Take it, Mr. Temple.

I did, but I didn’t like the guy. And somehow I knew Anne wasn’t coming back to Findlay with me or anyone else.

I’ll give it a shot. Forget the five grand. Pinkerton pays my salary. But I need more than a city. I need a full description and a recent photograph. I need to know what she likes and dislikes. Her habits. Her aspirations. Finding people in big cities isn’t all that easy.

On the mantel at the far end of the room is a good photograph of Anne. Bring it here.

I did. It was a full-length picture of a twenty-year-old dressed for a party. In the photo, Anne didn’t look quite as pretty as her dress. She was attractive without being memorable.

I handed Johnson the photo in its elaborate silver frame. He gazed at it, perhaps for longer than he intended. Eventually, he took the photo from the frame and handed it to me. Then he lifted the receiver from the telephone on his desk and pushed a button below the dial.

Richard, he said, Mr. Temple requires information on Anne. Please join us and oblige him.

He hung up and sat stone-faced.

I asked how tall Anne was.

About five seven, five eight, he said without conviction.

He began to read a file on his desk, ignoring me like the hired hand I was. While we waited, I scanned the bookcases that rose, floor to ceiling, between the room’s French windows.

Richard came in through a door to the left of Johnson’s desk. Johnson introduced us and passed me off without offering a single word. No farewell, no encouragement, no parting handshake. As I was led from the room, Johnson swiveled his chair away from us. His shoulders sagged as if he was an actor shrugging off a role.

Richard looked like an accountant who was having a hard time balancing the books, although he carried himself with some authority. His hair was slicked down in the fashion of the day. Over the years, I’ve learned not to make judgments based on appearances. Take the Babe. Out of uniform, he looked more like a beer salesman than the Sultan of Swat. For all I knew, Richard might have been Johnson’s hatchet man.

He led me to his office, which was filled with the clutter of someone who worked for a living. He told me to call him Dick. I never did learn his last name.

Your boss isn’t exactly Mister Bojangles.

Neither was Richard. But he was loyal.

For Tom, formality has become the bulwark of composure.

That was a mouthful. But Richard was a talker, at least compared with his boss. According to him, Johnson employed half the town making toilets, bathtubs, and sinks and paid his men a fair wage. I wondered how many heads Pinkerton had busted over the definition of fair. I didn’t ask. Sometimes you can learn more by letting people ramble on. When Richard stopped, I’d learned something of Johnson’s business, but nothing about Anne or her family. Maybe Johnson wanted it that way. I didn’t figure Anne had run away over the price of porcelain. Let’s ease into this, I thought.

Is Mr. Johnson a big reader?

Pardon?

All the books in his office.

Oh, those. No, he’s more a collector than a reader. The missus got him started. It’s a valuable collection. But the missus and Anne have read most of them. Carefully, of course.

I thought about making a joke about careful reading—read the wrong books, and bingo, your head is filled with dangerous ideas. But I understood Richard’s point, and he wouldn’t have appreciated mine.

What do they like reading?

I’m not sure what you mean.

Anne and her mother. The classics? Biographies? Muckraking fiction? Histories? Sherlock Holmes?

I don’t really know their preferences.

Then tell me about the family.

He hesitated just long enough to make me wonder how calculated his answer would be.

Anne has an older brother, Tom Junior. He manages the hardware factory. She has two older sisters: Rachel, who’s married to a banker in Cleveland, and Betty, who’s married to a doctor, here in Findlay. Anne’s mother took ill about two years ago and is confined to her rooms for the most part. That has been hard on the family.

What’s wrong with Mrs. Johnson?

I don’t know, but it’s not life-threatening. Still, the house has been a somber place. I suspect that’s why Anne wanted to travel after college.

What degree did she take?

I’m not sure, but I have her reports from Oberlin. She was a fine student, as you can see.

I looked at the transcripts. They had been on Richard’s desk, ready for me. I suspected that what I really needed was something Richard was less eager to share. The reports told me that Anne had majored in English literature while minoring in French and theater. I tried to picture the vaguely pretty girl in the photograph testing her French in a Left Bank bistro.

When did she go to Paris?

She didn’t, not at first anyway. She and her college roommate, Cathy Sawicki, were going to tour Europe. They started in England. Cathy came home after a few weeks. Anne went on to Paris. She’s been there ever since.

How long ago did Cathy come home?

About two months ago.

Do you have any current photos of Anne? This is all I have.

I showed him the picture Johnson had given me.

That doesn’t do her justice. But no, I have no photos.

Since Anne left, has she sent any letters home?

Some notes. I haven’t read them.

I wondered how he could characterize what he hadn’t read.

May I see them?

Richard went to a wooden cabinet and pulled a file of handwritten letters. The earlier ones, all from England, were written on peach-colored stationery with flowers tumbling down the left margin. The few remaining letters were from Paris and were written on plain white paper. The last of the Paris correspondence was a month old and had only Paris for an address. Richard was right. The letters were really just notes. Some were to her father and some to her mother. None were to both.

Those to her father were formal, terse reports. One read,

You remain in my thoughts, Father. Distance hasn’t softened my feelings. Although I feel for you, I cannot accept what you’ve done. Otherwise, I’m well. Parts of France are like Findlay—beautiful countryside scarred by factories belching smoke.

Anne

So what had Johnson done that Anne couldn’t accept? And the belching smoke crack seemed like a cheap shot, the kind taken by a person with a grudge. There was obviously more going on in the Johnson household than Mom’s sickness.

The notes to her mother were soft and almost sorrowful. One read,

Dearest Mother,

I am growing stronger. I continue to meet people who wring every ounce from life. Someday we will spend hours together, and I will tell you all about them. Until then, you must do your best. When I get down or need a taste of home, I conjure up memories of our trips. What wonderful times.

Love, Anne

Dick, in this letter to her father, Anne says she can’t accept something her father did. What would that be?

I don’t know. But like many of today’s young women, Anne can be very independent. I suspect it is nothing more than that.

Give me an example.

Smoking. Tom didn’t think it was ladylike.

Anything else?

Tom wasn’t keen on Anne going to Europe with Cathy. And he disapproved of Anne going to Paris without Cathy. He thinks it’s a bad idea for Anne to be traveling alone, a half a world away from her family.

In this letter to her mother, Anne talks about some wonderful trips they took. Where did they go?

I’m not aware of any trips, other than vacations with the whole family.

I asked Richard if I could keep the two notes I’d asked about, explaining that handwriting could sometimes help identify a person. He said he would have to check with Johnson. I went back to reading the mail from Anne. Richard sat patiently as if he were accustomed to waiting.

Anne’s correspondence was not exactly enlightening and certainly did not explain why she should be regarded as a runaway. In the last note to her mother, she referred to my last letter and asked, Did my openness frighten you? Forgive me if it did. I am trying to be more honest with myself, but perhaps should not have been so direct with you.

I had not found any letter that was frighteningly open.

Dick, how did these notes wind up in this file?

Tom gave them to me for filing with the family papers.

Never Missus Johnson?

No, Tom brought them after they finished reading them.

A letter appears to be missing.

Missing?

Yes, the last note to Mrs. Johnson refers to an earlier letter that isn’t here.

Perhaps it never made it to Findlay. Europe is a long way off.

Or perhaps Mister Johnson didn’t give it to you.

No, he believes in complete records. If the letter had been received, it would be here.

The tone of his voice announced the end of the discussion.

I asked how to find Cathy Sawicki. As luck would have it, she lived in Findlay. He gave me directions to her house. I told him I would be back after talking to Anne’s friend.

Five minutes later, Richard passed me to the butler, who seemed insulted when I asked the nature of Mrs. Johnson’s problem.

I’m sure I don’t know.

What type of treatment is she receiving?

I don’t know, although Mister Johnson’s friend Doctor Strother often stops to see her.

She doesn’t have her own doctor?

Doctor Strother has been Mister Johnson’s friend since they were boys. He is a fine physician.

That bit of misdirection only raised more questions.

The butler maneuvered me out the front door as if letting me in had been a mistake.

The Sawickis lived in a more modest world about three miles away. Their brick-paved street was tree lined and only four blocks from Findlay’s town square. Their house was like twenty others in the neighborhood. Wood frame construction. Four bedrooms up. Living room, dining room, kitchen, and sunroom down. Basement with a coal-burning furnace. On the front porch was a glider flanked by a pair of rockers.

As I came up the walk, the wooden screen door swung open. A big man in bib overalls greeted me. Popeye forearms extended below his rolled-up shirtsleeves.

Mister Temple, Dick called. Said to expect you. I’m Bud Sawicki, he said, extending his hand for a shake. Cathy’s dad. Call me Bud.

Thanks for seeing me. But I came to see Cathy.

She’ll be down in a minute, he said. There was an edge in his voice.

He led me into a large friendly living room. It was a third the size of Tom Johnson’s study, but twice the size of the biggest living room in the neighborhood where I grew up. Life is full of pecking orders. By my standards, Bud Sawicki had done pretty well.

Do you work for American Fixture? I asked.

Twenty-six years. I’m showing young Tom the ropes in the fixture factory. When he’s got it down, I’m moving over to the porcelain works.

Blood apparently ran deeper than twenty-six years.

"How did Anne and Cathy get to be friends?’

Went through high school together and then were roommates in college. It was tough for Anne. Not so easy being the boss’s daughter. The other kids were afraid of her, I suppose. But not Cathy. Tom and I are friends, and the families visited even after Tom built Flushmore for Violet.

Flushmore?

Violet went to Europe just after the war. She came home with some fancy ideas. One of them was to build a grand house. That’s how Flushmore came to be.

He laughed.

That’s what everyone calls the place. Even Tom, when Violet isn’t around. A few of us started calling Tom King Flush. He said that made me the duke of crap.

I just met him. He didn’t seem the type, kidding around like that.

He’s just worried . . . about Anne.

Did the whole family go on this trip to Europe? The one after the war.

No, just Violet. Oh, wait. I think she took that maid. Eva was her name. They were gone a couple of months. Violet came home with her grand ideas.

Sounds like the trip changed Violet.

"She was always a little . . . high-flown, but yes. She started having salons where some writer or painter would come speak and give the town some culture. Bud rolled his eyes. A little highfalutin for me. Tom paid a pretty penny to bring those fellas in. Truth is, folks here woulda liked a barn dance better. Still, her heart was in the right place, even if most of us weren’t ready for what she was offering."

Violet is sick now?

Yes. No more salons. And Tom dropped out of our monthly poker game. Tom’s taken the whole thing hard. Oh, here’s Cathy. Cathy, this is the man Dick called about.

I suggested the two of us should take a walk in the small park across from her house. When Bud looked irritated, I knew my suggestion had been on the money. Some kids won’t admit the sun comes up in the morning if their parents are around.

As it turned out, Cathy wasn’t saying much even in the absence of her father. She and Anne might