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The minute she was out the door, I grabbed my jacket and shoulder bag and trotted over to the courthouse, where I entered a side door and climbed the wide red-tile steps to the corridor above. Arches in the stairwell were open to the chill winter air and my footsteps echoed against the mosaic tile walls. I went into the county clerk’s office and filled out a form, requesting the file on Augustus Vronsky. I’d been in the same place seven weeks previously, doing the background check on Solana Rojas. Clearly, I’d screwed that up, but I wasn’t sure how. I sat in one of the two wooden chairs while I waited, and six minutes later I had the record in hand.
I moved to the far side of the room and sat down at a table, occupied largely by a computer. I opened the file and leafed through, though there wasn’t much to see. I was looking at a standard four-page form. A pale X had been typed into various boxes ru
Under “Character and estimated value of the property of the estate,” all the particulars were declared “Unknown,” including real property, personal property, and pensions. A box was also ticked stating that the conservatee was unable to provide for his or her personal needs for physical health, food, clothing, or shelter. Supporting facts were apparently spelled out in an attachment that was part of the Confidential Supplemental Information and Petition “on file herein.” There was no sign of the document, but that’s what the term “confidential” implies. In the paragraph below that, a box was ticked indicating that Gus Vronsky, proposed conservatee, was “substantially unable to manage his or her financial resources or resist fraud or undue influence.” Again, supporting facts were specified in the Confidential Supplemental Information, which had been filed with the petition but was unavailable as part of the public record. The signatures of the attorney, De
Also part of the file was an invoice for “Caregiver management” costs, broken down according to fees, month, and ru
I marked the pages I wanted reproduced-which is to say, all of them-and returned the file to the clerk. While I waited for copies, I borrowed a phone book and looked up De
When the clerk called my name, I paid for the copies and tucked them in my bag.
De
I studied the directory in the lobby, which really amounted to little more than a walk-in pantry where you could wait for an elevator that moved with all the speed and grace of a dumbwaiter. The rents here weren’t cheap. The location was prime, though the building itself was woefully out of date. The owner probably couldn’t bear to sacrifice the time, energy, and money required to move tenants out and do a proper remodeling job.
The elevator arrived, a four-by-four cubicle that jerked and shuddered throughout my creeping ascent. This gave me time to examine safety inspection dates and speculate about how many people it would take to exceed the weight limit, which was 2,500 pounds. I figured ten guys at 250 pounds apiece, assuming you could squeeze ten guys into a contraption that size. Twenty women at 125 pounds each was out of the question.
I exited on three. The floor in the corridor was a speckled black-and-white terrazzo marble, rubble in other words, bound with white cement, white sand, and pigment, and reformed as tile. The walls were paneled in oak that was darkened by time. Oversized windows at either end of the hall let in daylight that was augmented by rafts of fluorescent tubing. The entrance doors to the offices were pebbled glass with the names of the occupants stenciled in black. I thought the effect was charming, suggestive as it was of lawyers’ and detectives’ offices in old black-and-white movies.
Altinova’s office was midway down the hall. The door opened into a modest reception area that had been modernized by the addition of a desk made of stainless steel and poured glass. The desktop was bare except for a four-line telephone console. The lighting in the room was indirect. The chairs-four of them-looked as though they’d make your butt go numb minutes after you sat down. There were no side tables, no magazines, no art, and no plants. Certain “interior designers” do shit like this and call it minimalism. What a joke. The place looked like the tenant had yet to move in.
A receptionist came through a door in the back wall marked “private.” She was a tall, cool blonde, too pretty to imagine she wasn’t banging the boss.
“May I help you?”
“I wonder if I might have a quick word with Mr. Altinova.” I thought the word “quick” struck a nice note.
“You have an appointment?”
“Actually, I don’t. I was over at the courthouse and decided I’d chance it. Is he in?”