“Listen, you keep up that fasting stuff, and we’ll be scraping you off the floor again. I think you scared Bo half to death.”
“No, no, I had a big breakfast this morning. You go ahead and eat.”
Sally took what seemed like half an hour to check her makeup and brush off her dress, then finally left the office. Scotty waited until Mike was on the radio, then picked up some papers and went to the copying machine. She placed them on top of the machine and pressed the On button. When Mike was finishing his radio call, she turned her back to him and flipped the papers behind the machine.
“Oh, dammit,” she shouted.
Mike turned. “What’s the matter, Scotty?”
“Oh, I’ve dropped some papers behind the copying machine, and you know what the thing weighs. Give me a hand, will you, Mike?”
“Sure I will.” He came over and helped her wrestle it away from the wall.
“Just a couple of more inches, and I’ll be able to get behind it,” Scotty said. The gap opened; she wedged herself around the machine and recovered both the papers she had deliberately dropped and the lost ledger sheet of Bo’s. She shuffled them together to conceal the green paper among the others. “Got ‘em. Thanks, Mike.” Together, they moved the heavy machine back into place.
“You shouldn’t be doing that sort of shoving, Scotty,” Mike said. “You might not be recovered yet.”
“Oh, I’m fine, thanks. I am a little hungry, though. And I was going to skip lunch.”
“Well, I don’t think you should do that.”
“Tell you what,” she said, brightly. “I’ll split a pizza with you.”
“Hey, you really are hungry.”
“I’ll keep an eye on the radio, if you’ll go get it.”
“Sure.” Mike put on his hat and left.
“Anything but anchovies,” she called after him. Scotty ran for her purse, got the filing cabinet key, threw herself at the thing, and got it open. She pulled out the miscellaneous file, removed the other five green ledger sheets, made sure they were in the proper order, added the sixth sheet, and started to replace them in the file. They stuck halfway in. She ran her fingers between the pages to push aside the obstruction, and they met something small and thick. A notebook, she thought. John said there’d be a notebook. The front door to the office slammed. She spun around, the forbidden file in her hand. A man she did not know was standing at the counter.
“I’d like to pay a parking ticket,” he said.
“Oh, sure,” she said, relieved. She hesitated for a moment, then put the file on top of the cabinet, and went to help the man.
She took the ticket. “That’s five dollars.”
He opened his wallet and thumbed through some bills. “You got change for a twenty?”
“Haven’t you got anything smaller?” she asked, looking toward the door nervously. Mike might be back at any moment; or worse, Bo.
“Sorry, that’s all I’ve got.”
Scotty took the twenty, went to her desk, opened a drawer, took out the cash box, unlocked it, put the twenty in and took out a five and a ten, conscious all the time of the unlocked cabinet and the deadly file, lying there, waiting to be discovered.
“There you are,” she said, stamping the ticket and tearing off the stub. “And here’s your receipt.”
The man left, and Scotty raced for the file. She reached in for the notebook and came out with a small, green booklet with a gold American eagle stamped on it. A passport. Quickly, she thumbed through the pages. Bo’s face stared at her from the photograph, but he was wearing glasses. Bo didn’t wear glasses. The passport was issued to a Peter Patrick O’Hara. The address was Bo’s.
Scotty wanted a copy of this, badly, but she looked up and saw Mike standing across the street with a pizza box in his hand, talking to somebody. She went quickly through the passport; there were a lot of stamps, but only for two countries – Switzerland and the United States. She repeated the passport number to herself three times, aloud, returned it to the file, and the file to the cabinet. She was sitting at her desk again, making a note of the passport number, when Mike came in with the pizza.
At ten minutes to twelve, Howell parked the station wagon where he could see the front door of the courthouse and waited. Bo’s story had been gnawing at him for days. It was plausible enough, but the reporter in him wanted it confirmed. At the stroke of noon, the girl who worked in the records office left the courthouse and turned a corner, out of sight. Howell went and did some grocery shopping and returned just before one o’clock, in time to see the girl go back in. Shortly, Mrs. O’Neal, the battleax of county records, left the courthouse. He had an hour.
The girl looked surprised to see him. “I thought we’d run you off,” she said, laughing.
“I lost the battle, but not the war, I hope.”
“You want me to look for the map for you?”
“Actually, there’s something else I’d rather see. Can you find me an old deed of transfer? Maybe from twenty-four, twenty-five years ago?”
“Sure. We’ve got all those. I don’t need to ask Mrs. O’Hara.”
“Good.” Howell read her the lot numbers he’d copied from the maps.
“Right this way.”
He followed her across the room and down a long row of filing cabinets. She consulted the lot numbers and the labels on the drawers. “Here we are,” she said. She opened the drawer, flipped through some files, and extracted a deed.
Howell skimmed through it, and it seemed straightforward enough. The property had transferred from Donal O’Coineen to Eric Sutherland, and O’Coineen had signed it. Or had he? Howell thought for a moment. “Would you have a record of old business licenses?” he asked. In addition to being a farmer, O’Coineen had been a well digger, Enda McCauliffe had said.
“Sure. In what name?”
“Donal O’Coineen. Try 1951.” He followed her to another row of filing cabinets.
“Here you are,” she said, extracting a sheet of paper. “Here’s the renewal application for 1951.”
Howell took the application and the deed to a window for better light and compared Donal O’Coineen’s signature on the application with the one on the deed. They were identical, or near enough. O’Coineen had signed over his land to Eric Sutherland, and almost immediately after that had taken his family and left the farm. Shortly afterwards, the roadbed had given way, and the farm had been obliterated. It all added up. Howell felt disappointed. The story had excited him, and now it was over. At least he could get back to work on Lurton Pitts’s book, now, with this O’Coineen thing settled in his mind.
He took the deed and the application back to the girl. “Thanks,” he said. “I really appreciate it.” He was about to hand her the papers, when his eye caught something, and he took them back. Under O’Coineen’s signature on the deed was another signature.
The document had been witnessed by one Christopher F. Scully.
23
Scotty burst into the cabin, startling Howell, who was banging away on the word processor.
“I’ve got him, John!” she cried. “He’s dirty and I’ve got him!”
Howell clutched his chest. “Well, do you have to give me a coronary in the process? I’m at that age, you know.”
“You’ll be younger than springtime when I’ve told you what I’ve found,” Scotty said, throwing herself on the sofa and kicking feet in the air, losing her shoes in the process.
“All right, all right, what is it? What have you found?”
“Bo has got a passport,” Scotty crowed, triumphantly.
Howell looked at her incredulously. “So what? So have several million other Americans.”
“Not in the name of Peter Patrick O’Hara, they haven’t.”
“Come again?”
“It’s got Bo’s picture in it, but O’Hara’s name. It’s a phony!”
“Is that it?”
“Huh?”