“Kids want Subway sandwiches. They like the ads on television.”
“What kind of sandwiches?”
“Your choice. Seven?”
“Seven,” I said.
“Call me later,” she said. “I’ve got to run down to Englewood.”
I hung up the phone.
“You like movies?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said cautiously.
“Old movies?”
“Sure, sometimes.”
“Really old movies,” I pushed. “From the Thirties and Forties?”
“Not particularly.”
He was beginning to look at me as if he had come to the wrong place, which was fine with me. He didn’t move so I pushed ahead.
“How old are your children?” I asked, looking at Severtson, taking off my hat, and putting it on the desk. “You have recent pictures of them and your wife?”
“Yes,” he said, reaching into his inside jacket pocket. “Sally said I should bring them.”
He handed me a brown envelope with a clasp. I opened it and looked at the three pictures. There were individual color photos of a boy and a girl. Both were smiling. Neither looked at all like their father. The third photograph told me who they looked like. The kids stood on each side of their mother, who wore jeans and a white shirt tied about her belly to reveal a very nice navel. Her hair was blond, just like both kids, and all three had the same smile.
“My daughter’s name is Sydney, after my father. She’s four. My son is Kenneth Jr. He’s six. He says he has a loose tooth.”
“Nice family,” I said, returning the photographs to the envelope and placing it in front of me.
“Used to be,” he said. “Then… wherever Janice has the kids, Andrew Stark is probably with them.”
“Friend of your wife?” I asked.
“More than a friend,” Severtson said.
He looked as if he were about to cry.
“I see,” I said.
“Stark is my partner,” he said. “We own S amp; S Marine on Stickney Point Road. Upscale boats.”
“I’ve seen it,” I said.
“I caught them on the phone. Janice didn’t deny it. She says it’s my fault, that I’ve changed, that she needs attention not grunts.”
“Have you?”
“What?”
“Changed,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “We’ve been married eleven years. I gained about four pounds a year. It’s in my genes. So now Andy Stark is in my wife’s jeans.”
“You talk to him about it?”
“They were gone before I could,” he said. “Janice left me a note saying she wants a divorce and that she’ll get back to me as soon as she’s settled somewhere. That’s what she says she wants.”
“What do you want?”
“My kids back,” he said. “I’d probably even take Janice back if she’d come. She’s going through some midlife thing or some woman’s thing. I don’t know. But she has no right to run away with Andy and take the kids. I want you to find them and bring them back.”
“I can find them, maybe,” I said. “It’s hard to hide in the age of computers. But I can’t force her to come back. If she doesn’t want to come back, I can tell you where she is. It might be a good idea for you to let a lawyer know what’s going on while I’m looking.”
“I’ll do that,” he said.
“Did you bring the note she left?”
He went into an inside jacket pocket and came out with an envelope. He handed it to me. It had “Ken” written neatly on the front in blue ink.
I opened the envelope and unfolded the piece of unlined paper inside. The note was handwritten, neat, blue ink. It read: “Ken, the children and I are going. Please don’t try to find us. I’ll write to you when we are settled. I think a divorce would be for the best.” It was signed “Janice.”
“Show this to your lawyer and start thinking about whether you want custody of your kids,” I said, returning the note and envelope to him. “That note is the start of a good case. And if she’s in a hotel room with Stark and your son and daughter, and I see them spend the night together, I can testify if it comes to that.”
I waited to see if this was sinking in.
“Ask my lawyer,” he said.
“That’s what I would do.”
“I want my kids,” he insisted. “I may want my wife, but if I can’t have her, I want Kenny and Syd.”
“I told you what I can do,” I said.
He thought about that for about a minute.
“Okay,” he said.
We worked out the payment and he gave me a five-hundred-dollar cash advance, all in fifties. I told him I’d check in with him and if it started to take a lot of time he could reassess the situation, especially if I had to go out of town or out of the state. He agreed.
“Find them,” he said, placing a business card in front of me. “Please find them.”
And he was gone. His office number was on the front of the card along with his home number. I pocketed the card as my phone rang. I picked it up and said, “Fonesca.”
“Colleen Davenport,” Warren Murphy’s secretary said.
She worked for one of the partners at Tycinker, Oliver, and Schwartz, where I was on a retainer. In exchange for that retainer, I got paid a fixed sum each time I served papers and I got the reasonable use of the services of Harvey the Hacker, who had an office in the back of the law firm.
“Two jobs,” she said. “One has to be done today. The other by Friday.”
“I’ll be right over,” I said. “Can I talk to Harvey?”
Colleen said Harvey was out of town, which could mean that Harvey was out of town or Harvey had fallen off the wagon. I hung up and went to my backup, Dixie Cruise, no relation to the actor.
Dixie was slim, trim, with very black hair in a short style. She was no more than twenty-five, pretty face, and big round glasses. Dixie worked behind the counter at a coffee bar in Gulf Gate Plaza. About six months back, I had sought her out to answer a summons about a reported assault she had witnessed in the coffee bar and found that Dixie, who had as down-home an accent as any Billy Bob, was a computer whiz.
I called her at the coffee bar and she agreed to meet me when she got off of work at her apartment in a slightly run-down twelve-flat apartment building near the main post office. She had a small living room with a sofa bed, a large kitchen, and a bedroom devoted to her two computers, two large speakers, and all kinds of gray metal pieces with lights.
When I got to Dixie’s apartment and she got in front of her computers, it took her ten minutes and cost me fifty bucks, which I would bill to Kenneth Severtson. Andrew Stark belonged to AAA. Three days earlier he had purchased two adult and two children’s tickets to Disney World, Sea World, and Universal Theme Park. Dixie got a list of hotels in Orlando. Andrew Stark had Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express cards. He had used the Visa to check into an Orlando hotel yesterday.
“Embassy Suites on International Drive,” Dixie said, pointing at the screen as if her right hand were a handgun. “Checkout Thursday. Want to know what he ordered from room service?”
“Should I?”
Dixie shook her head and said, “A lot of burgers, fries, and Cokes, both diet and the new vanilla one,”
In the old days, prehacker, I would have gone to AAA, told a sad story, and hoped for the best. Then I would have tried airlines, travel agencies, and friends of Janice Severtson and Andrew Stark. Sarasota isn’t huge but it
