'Well,' he said.
I didn't feel tired. It occurred to me that I ought to, no sleep, a lot of booze the night before. But I didn't feel tired. Not eager, either, but not tired.
I said, 'I came to report. I know as much about your daughter as I'll ever know, and it's as much as you need to know. I could spend more of my time and your money, but I don't see the point.'
'It didn't take you very long.'
His tone was neutral, and I wondered how he meant it. Was he admiring my efficiency or annoyed that his two thousand dollars had only purchased five days of my time?
I said, 'It took long enough. I don't know that it would have taken any less time if you had given me everything in the beginning. Probably not. It would have made things a little easier for me, though.'
'I don't understand.'
'I can understand why you didn't. You felt I had all I needed to know. If I had just been looking for facts you might have been right, but I was looking for facts that would make up a picture, and I'd have done better knowing everything in front.' He was puzzled, and the heavy dark eyebrows were elevated above the top rims of his glasses. I said, 'The reason I didn't let you know I was coming was that I had some things to do in Utica. I caught a dawn flight up here, Mr. Hanniford. I spent about five hours learning things you could have told me five days ago.'
'What sort of things?'
'I went to a few places. The Bureau of Vital Statistics in City Hall. The Times-Sentinel offices. The police station.'
'I didn't hire you to ask questions here in Utica.'
'You didn't hire me at all, Mr. Hanniford. You married your wife on-well, I don't have to tell you the date. It was a first marriage for both of you.'
He didn't say anything. He took his glasses off and put them on the desk in front of him.
'You might have told me Wendy was illegitimate.'
'Why? She didn't know it herself.'
'Are you sure of that?'
'Yes.'
'I'm not.' I drew a breath. 'There were two U.S. Marines from the Utica area killed in the Inchon landing. One of them was black, so I ruled him out. The other was named Robert Blohr. He was married. Was he also Wendy's father?'
'Yes.'
'I'm not trying to pick scabs, Mr. Hanniford. I think Wendy knew she was illegitimate. And it's possible that it doesn't matter whether she did or not.'
He stood up and walked to the window. I sat there wondering whether Wendy had known about her father and decided it was ten-to-one that she had. He was the chief character in her personal mythology, and she had spent all her life looking for an incarnation of him. The ambivalence of her feelings about the man seemed to derive from some knowledge over and above what she had been told by Hanniford and her mother.
He stayed at the window for a time. Then he turned and looked thoughtfully at me. 'Perhaps I should have told you,' he said finally. 'I didn't conceal it on purpose. That is, I gave little thought at the time to Wendy's... illegitimacy. That's been a completely closed chapter for so many years that it never occurred to me to mention it.'
'I can understand that.'
'You said you had a report to make,' he said. He returned to his chair and sat down. 'Go ahead, Scudder.'
I started all the way back in Indiana. Wendy at college, not interested in boys her own age, interested always in older men. She had had affairs with her professors, most of them probably casual liaisons, one at least other than casual, at least on the man's part. He had wanted to leave his wife. The wife had taken pills, perhaps in a genuine suicide attempt, perhaps as a grandstand play to save her marriage.
And perhaps she herself hadn't known which.
'At any rate, there was a scandal of sorts. The whole campus was aware of it, whether or not it became officially a matter of record. That explains why Wendy dropped out of school a couple of months short of graduation. There was really no way she could stay there.'
'Of course not.'
'It also explains why the school wasn't desperately concerned that she had disappeared. I'd wondered about that. From what you said, their attitude was fairly casual. Evidently they wanted to let you know she was gone but weren't prepared to tell you why she had left, but they knew she had good reasons to leave and weren't concerned about her physical well-being.'
'I see.'
'She went to New York, as you know. She became involved with older men almost immediately. One of them took her to Miami. I could give you his name, but it doesn't matter. He died a couple of years ago. It's hard to tell now just how big a role he played in Wendy's life, but in addition to taking her to Miami he let her use his name when she applied for her apartment. She put his firm down as her employer, and he backed her up when the rental agent called.'
'Did he pay her rent?'
'It's possible. Whether he paid all or part of her support at the time is something only he could tell you, and there's no way to ask him. If you want my guess, her involvement with him was not an exclusive one.'
