Windfall

‘Yesterday,’ said Richardson dryly. ‘He sounded mad.’

‘Then I guess I’d better see the old bastard,’ said Hardin sourly.

Gunnarsson greeted him with, ‘Where the hell have you been?’

‘Checking a contact on the Myerson case,’ said Hardin inventively, making a mental note to record the visit in the Myerson file. Gunnarsson sometimes checked back.

Gunnarsson put his hands flat on the desk and glowered at him. He was a burly, square man who looked as though he had been hacked out of a block of granite and in spite of the heat he wore his coat. Rumour had it that Gunnarsson lacked sweat glands. He said, ‘You can forget that, Ben; I’m taking you off the case. I have something else for you.’

‘Okay,’ said Hardin.

Gunnarsson tossed a thin file across the desk. ‘Let’s get this straight. You clear this one and you get a bonus. You crap on it and you get canned. We’ve been carrying you long enough.’

Hardin looked at him levelly. ‘You make yourself clear. How important is this one?’

Gunnarsson flapped his hand. ‘I wouldn’t know. A Limey lawyer wants an answer. You’re to find out what happened to a South African called Adriaan Hendriks who came to the States some time in the 1930s. Find out all about him, especially whether he married and had kids. Find them too.’

‘That’s going to take some legwork,’ said Hardin thoughtfully. ‘Who can I use?’

‘No one; you use your own damn legs.’ Gunnarsson was blunt, if you can’t clear us a pisswilly job like this then I’ll know you’re no use to Gunnarsson Associates. Now you’ll do it this way. You take your car and you go on the road and you find what happened to this guy. And you do it yourself. If you have to leave New York I don’t want you going near any of the regional offices.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because that’s the way I want it. And I’m the boss. Now get going.’

So Hardin went away and, as he laid the file on his desk, he thought glumly that he had just received an ultimatum. He sat down, opened the file, and found the reason for its lack of bulk. It contained a single sheet of computer print-out which told him nothing that Gunnarsson had not already told him; that a man called Adriaan Hendriks was believed to have entered the United States in the late thirties. The port of entry was not even recorded.

‘Jesus wept!’ said Hardin.

Ben Hardin wished, for perhaps the thousandth time, or it could have been the ten thousandth, that he was in another line of work. Every morning when he woke up in whatever crummy motel room it happened to be it was the thought that came into his mind: ‘I wish I was doing something else.’ And that was followed by the automatic: ‘Goddamn that bastard, Gunnarsson,’ and by the equally automatic first cigarette of the day which made him cough.

And every morning when he was confronted by breakfast, invariably the junk food of the interstate highways, the same thought came into his mind. And when he knocked on a door, any door, to ask the questions, the thought was fleetingly at the back of his mind. As with the Frenchman who said that everything reminded him of sex so everything reminded Hardin of the cruel condition of his life, and it had made him an irritable and cynical man.

On the occasion of the latest reiteration of his wish he was beset by water. The rain poured from the sky, not in drops but in a steady sheet. It swirled along the gutters a foot or more deep because the drains were unable to cope, and Hardin had the impression that his car was in imminent danger of being swept away. Trapped in the metal box of the car he could only wait until the downpour ceased. He was certainly not going to get out because he would be soaked to the skin and damn near drowned in ten seconds flat.

And this was happening in California—in Los Angeles, the City of the Angels. No more angels, he thought; the birds will all have drowned. He visualized a crowd of angels sitting on a dark cloud, their wings bedraggled, and managed a tired grin. They said that what California did today New York would do tomorrow. If that was true someone in New York should be building a goddamn Ark. He wondered if there was a Mr Noah in the New York telephone book.

While he waited he looked back on the last few weeks. The first and obvious step had been to check with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. He found that the 1930s had been a lean decade for immigrants—there were a mere 528,431 fortunate people admitted into the country. McDowell, the immigration officer he checked with, observed dryly that Hardin was lucky—in the 1920s the crop had been over four million. Hardin doubted his luck.

‘South Africa,’ said McDowell. ‘That won’t be too bad. Not many South Africans emigrate.’

A check through the files proved him right—but there was no one called Adriaan Hendriks.

‘They change their names,’ said McDowell some time later. ‘Sometimes to Americanize the spelling. There’s a guy here called Adrian Hendrix…’ He spelled it out. ‘Would that be the guy you want? He entered the country in New Orleans.’

‘That’s my man,’ said Hardin with satisfaction.

The search so far had taken two weeks.

Further searches revealed that Hendrix had taken out naturalization papers eight years later in Clarksville, Tennessee. More to the point he had married there. Establishing these simple facts took another three weeks and a fair amount of mileage.

Adrian Hendrix had married the daughter of a grain and feed merchant and seemed in a fair way to prosper had it not been for his one fault. On the death of his father-in-law in 1950 he proceeded to drink away the profits of the business he had inherited and died therefrom but not before he sired a son, Henry Hendrix.

Hardin looked at his notebook bleakly. The substitution of the son for the father had not made his task any easier. He had reported to Gunnarsson only to be told abruptly to find young Hendrix and to stop belly-aching, and there followed further weeks of searching because Henry Hendrix had become a drop-out—an undocumented man—after leaving high school, but a combination of legwork, persistence and luck had brought Hardin to the San Fernando Valley in California where he was marooned in his car.

It was nearly three-quarters of an hour before the rain eased off and he decided to take a chance and get out. He swore as he put his foot into six inches of water and then squelched across the street towards the neat white house. He sheltered on the porch, shaking the wetness from his coat, then pressed the bell and heard chimes.

Presently the door opened cautiously, held by a chain, and an eye and a nose appeared at the narrow opening. ‘I’m looking for Henry Hendrix,’ Hardin said, and flipped open a notebook. ‘I’m told he lives here.’

‘No one by that name here.’ The door began to close.

Hardin said quickly, ‘This is 82, Thorndale?’

‘Yeah, but my name’s Parker. No one called Hendrix here.’

‘How long have you lived here, Mr Parker?’

‘Who wants to know?’

‘I’m sorry.’ Hardin extracted a card from his wallet and poked it at the three-inch crack in the doorway. ‘My name is Hardin.’

The card was taken in two fingers and vanished. Parker said, ‘Gunnarsson Associates. You a private dick?’

‘I guess you could call me that,’ said Hardin tiredly.

‘This Hendrix in trouble?’

‘Not that I know of, Mr Parker. Could be the other way round, from what I hear. Could be good news for Hendrix.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ said Parker. ‘We’ve lived here eight months.’

‘Who did you buy the house from?’

‘Didn’t buy,’ said Parker. ‘We rent. The owner’s an old biddy who lives in Pasadena.’

‘And you don’t know the name of the previous tenant? He left no forwarding address?’ There was not much hope in Hardin’s voice.

‘Nope.’ Parker paused. ‘Course, my wife might know. She did all the renting business.’

‘Would it be possible to ask her?’

‘I guess so. Wait a minute.’ The door closed leaving Hardin looking at a peeling wooden panel. He heard a murmur of voices from inside the house and presently the door opened again and a woman peered at him then disappeared. He heard her say, ‘Take the chain off the door, Pete.’

‘Hell, Milly; you know what they told us about LA.’

‘Take the chain off,’ said Milly firmly. ‘What kind of a life is it living behind bolts and bars?’

The door closed, there was a rattle, and then it opened wide. ‘Come on in,’ said Mrs Parker. ‘It ain’t fit for a dog being out today.’