standing to the right of the desk. The boy looked like the woman with the purse. His eyes were halfclosed. His arms were crossed and he was leaning back against the thick glass that separated Sally from the caseworker across from her, Julio Vegas. Vegas, on the phone and alone, gave me a nod of recognition.
“Darrell,” Sally was saying evenly, “do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Darrell nodded.
“What am I saying?”
“I get in trouble again, maybe a judge takes me away from my mother.”
“More than maybe, Darrell, almost certain. And you heard your mother say that if you didn’t straighten out, she didn’t want to see you till you went somewhere else and came back a responsible man.”
“Yes,” Darrell said.
“You think you can straighten out?”
“Yes,” said Darrell without enthusiasm.
“Really?” Sally said, sitting back.
“Maybe,” the boy said, avoiding his mother’s eyes.
“Mrs. Caton?” Sally asked, turning her eyes to the thin woman. “You willing to try once more?”
“I got a choice?”
“Considering his police record and breaking into the car last night, I can start the paperwork now, put Darrell in juvenile detention, or we put him into Juvenile Justice and see how fast we can get in front of a judge if you say you can’t handle him anymore.”
It was a lose-lose situation. I recognized it. Sally had told me about it a few dozen times. Kid goes back to his mother, and there is no way outside a miracle that he is going to straighten out. Kid goes into the system, and the odds were good that if a foster home could be found, he wouldn’t straighten out and the foster home might even be worse for him than living with his mother. There was at least a shot if a good foster home could be found, but generally it was lose-lose.
Mrs. Caton looked at her son, at Sally, and at me. Sally watched the woman’s eyes and turned to me. She held up a finger to indicate that she would be finished in a minute. Normally, Sally’s minutes were half an hour long. She turned back to Mrs. Caton.
“Guess we can try again,” the woman said with a sigh and a shake of her head.
“Darrell?” Sally said, turning her head to the boy.
“I’ll habilitate,” he said.
“Good word choice,” Sally said. “Now make a good life choice.”
“Let’s go home, Darrell,” Mrs. Caton said, shaking her head to show that this was no more than she expected.
Darrell, who stood about three inches taller than his mother, moved past me. Darrell whispered to me, “What’d you do to your kid?”
Since I had no kid, I had no answer. He didn’t expect one. I didn’t put high hopes on Darrell’s habilitation.
When they were gone, Sally swiveled her chair toward me, took off her glasses, and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Sally is dark, pretty, maybe a little overweight, and definitely a lot overworked.
“That boy is thirteen,” she said. “His mother is twenty-eight. Do the math, Lew. I was bluffing. There’s no space in juvenile and no basis for any action. She’s stuck with him till he commits a felony, she kicks him out of their one-bedroom apartment, or he decides to live on the streets or with the crack dealer he picks up a few dollars from as a lookout.”
“Darrell is lost?” I said, sitting in the chair where Mrs. Caton had been.
“No,” she said, brushing back her dark hair with both hands. “Percentages are against him. I’m not. I’ll do an unannounced drop-in in a few nights, maybe take them out for coffee or an ice cream for which I will not be reimbursed.”
Sally was a widow. Her husband had died five years ago and she was raising her son and daughter in a two- bedroom apartment about five minutes away on Beneva. She worked sixty-hour weeks for thirty-seven and a half hours of pay and once in while she sent someone to me for the kind of help I can give. Someone like Kenneth Severtson.
“Use your phone?” I asked.
She handed it to me and I called Dixie.
“It’s Lew,” I said when she answered with her I’ve-got-a-bad-cold voice. “Anything on Trasker?”
“Not a trace after last Thursday,” she said in normal Dixie. “Thursday night he paid for gas on an Amex card. That’s it. No hotels, motels, escort services, bank withdrawals, bagels, cafe lattes, or bank deposits. Nothing. Whatever he’s spent since last Thursday has been with cash.”
“Thanks.”
“Did find something,” she said before I could hang up. “He’s got a record. Goes back thirty-two years. Spent two years in a California prison for nearly killing a man who he said was diddling his movie-star wife.”
“Claire Collins,” I said.
“That’s the one. William Trasker was Walter Trasnovorich when it happened. Legally changed his name when he got out in 1972.”
“Who was the man he almost killed?”
“Actor,” said Dixie. “Movie name, Don Heller. Real name, Franklin Morris. Want to know Roberta Trasker’s name before it was Claire Collins? Roberta Goulding, but I think there’s a name even earlier. There’s a big blank in her life from the age of zero to about seventeen. I’ll keep working on it.”
“Trasker have any family?” I asked. “Brothers, sisters?”
“I can find out,” she said.
I thought for a second. I could call Roberta Trasker for an answer, but I don’t like telephones. I don’t like the dead space I’m expected to fill on them and Roberta Trasker might give me a lot of dead space.
“See what you can find,” I said. “I’m going out of town tomorrow. You can leave a message on my answering machine if you find anything. And there’s someone else I’d like you to check on: Kevin Hoffmann, the real-estate developer.”
“Got it. I’ll have to bill you some more,” Dixie said apologetically. “I’m a working girl with two cats.”
I hadn’t seen any cats in her apartment but I believed her.
“Okay,” I said, and hung up to look at Sally, who was looking back at me with slightly raised eyebrows that held a question.
“Long story,” I said. “You have time for the China Palace buffet?”
Sally looked at her watch.
“No,” she said. “I’ve got to put in at least another hour filling out reports and then get home to the kids.”
“I’ll bring you some carryout. Cashew chicken and hot-and-sour soup?”
The China Palace was three minutes away on Fruitville.
“And a bunch of egg rolls for the kids,” she said, reaching down for her purse under the desk.
“On me,” I said. “I’ve got a paying client, remember?”
“Kenneth Severtson.”
“I’m going to Orlando tonight,” I said. “His wife and children are there with-”
“Andrew Stark,” she finished. “You have a plan?”
“No,” I said. “Find her, watch, maybe talk to her. Maybe I just tell Severtson where they are. He tells his lawyer. Think that’s a good idea?”
“Probably not,” she said. “I don’t think Kenneth Severtson’s likely to handle the situation very well. It’s better if you talk to her. If she won’t come back, Severtson can get a lawyer. They’re his children, too.”
“But that would take time,” I said.
“And money,” she added. “And she could be out of Florida before the paperwork could get done so someone like you could serve it.”
“What do you have on the family?”
She reached over to a stack of files leaning against the glass at the back of her desk, fished through them, and came up with the one I wanted. I knew she couldn’t let me read it, but that didn’t stop Sally from answering
