forties, with a tiny face and big black hair fanned out like crow’s wings. Her nameplate says m. rodriguez. She has a small fan on her desk, blowing right into her face, whipping up her wings, as if she’s in the middle of a photo shoot instead of sitting behind Plexiglas in a government office. Jay hands her his information request form, most of which he left blank. She pulls a pen from an Astros mug on her desk. “I’m not understanding this, baby,” she says, popping gum.
“I’m looking for any and all cases in which this person was a defendant.”
“Everything?”
“Everything.”
“Okay,” she says, nodding. “Name?”
“Elise Linsey. It’s there.”
She writes the name again, in her own, more legible hand writing.
“Date of birth?” she asks.
“I don’t have it.”
“Social Security number?”
“Don’t have it.”
“Race?” she asks.
“White.”
She writes the word in big, block letters across the bottom of the page.
“Okay,” she says. “But it’s gonna take a while.”
Jay glances in the manager’s direction, making sure she can’t hear what he’s about to ask next. “You have access to arrest records, don’t you?” He nods toward the mainframe behind M. Rodriguez, lowering his voice. “Sheriff’s department and HPD . . . you guys have copies of their arrest files, right?”
“Yes.”
“You think I could get a look at those? Arrest records for Elise Linsey?”
“Sure, long as you show me a piece of paper from a judge or a cop or somebody at the DA’s office saying you got permission to ‘get a look.’ Otherwise, you gotta file a discovery motion.” She gives him an admonishing look because she senses he knows bet ter. Arrest records are absolutely
“Come to think of it,” Jay says quickly. “I do have something else.”
Before he got out of his car, he took a single $100 bill off the roll of $800 in his right-hand pocket. He folded the bill over sev eral times, then, once in the waiting room, he wrapped it inside a blank Harris County criminal courts information request form. He now slides the form beneath the Plexiglas, watching as she unfolds the paper. The money springs open like a blooming flower. M. Rodriguez looks up at him, then back at the money, staring at it as if she doesn’t immediately understand its meaning, its sudden appearance on her desk. She turns slowly, glancing in the direction of her boss, two windows down. Jay imagines she’s about to call the manager over, that he has made a grave miscal culation. Then M. Rodriguez covers the money with her small hands, cupping her blossom. “I’ll see what I can do,” she says.
He’s there another hour, eating lunch out of a vending machine in the hall. Funyuns and a can of orange pop. From a pay phone in the hall, he calls home twice to check on Bernie, making a point of asking both times if there’ve been any visitors, if anyone has stopped by the apartment unexpectedly, thinking specifically about the man from the black Ford and his promise to stay in touch. He checks in at the office next. Eddie Mae is on the other line with her boyfriend when he calls and she puts him on hold for almost ten minutes. She comes back on the line with a la-di da, ain’t-life-funny tone in her voice, announcing that she and Rutherford have made up. Jay asks about his messages.
The building manager called, wanting to know about the rent check.
The hooker called twice. “And she sounds pissed.”
“What about Luckman? He call?”
“No.”
So he’s stalling, Jay thinks.
He wonders if the first offer is now completely off the table, if he should have grabbed it while he had the chance. He puts another dime in the machine and calls over to Charlie Luckman’s office himself, only to be told that Mr. Luckman is with a new client on urgent business and can’t be disturbed.
When Jay returns to the clerk’s office, M. Rodriguez calls him to her station. She taps on the glass, pointing him in the direction of an adjacent room. There’s a carpeted hallway lead ing from the waiting area into a smaller reading room, painted the same shade of hospital green, fluorescent bulbs flickering overhead. M. Rodriguez emerges in the doorway a few minutes after Jay sits down. She’s holding a stack of thin legal-size fold ers. They are the only two people in the room. “Return these to the office when you’re done,” she says, sliding the folders across the round table in the center of the room. Then, from inside her cropped blazer, M. Rodriguez pulls out a thick clump of papers, stapled together and folded in half down the center. “These you can keep.”
Jay reaches for the arrest records. M. Rodriguez slaps her hand on top. “You didn’t get it from me,” she says. She bends over at the waist, making sure to catch his eye. “I’ve never done nothing like this before,” she says. “It’s for my kid, you know. I’m gonna get him something nice for once.”
Jay shrugs. He doesn’t give a shit. It’s not his money.
When he lays it all out, page by page, the picture that develops does not in any way match the image he’s been holding in his head. Beneath the story he told himself about the woman from the boat—what he gathered from her creamy complexion, the cut of her fancy clothes and jewelry—is a life laced with prob lems. With a criminal history going back almost ten years.
There are five trials for Elise Linsey, defendant, in 1976 alone. Two in ’77.
According to the trial papers and sentencing orders, Elise Lin sey, last known address West Eighth Street, Galena Park, Texas, did two six-month stints in County for writing hot checks; thirty days for marijuana possession;
