Lewis looked understanding. "I fought with the Anzac Corps in World War II. My fiancee back home, she ... we were pregnant, though she never told me. I heard about the child-my son-from others once I returned home from the war, but by that time my girl had given him up for adoption. It had all been handled through a lawyer who refused to reveal any of the particulars, other than that the family had immigrated to America. Everyone said I should give up on it and go on with my life. Instead, I came here looking for my son. That was sixty-two years ago, and I"m still looking for him."
"Sixty-two years," Wally repeated. It sounded to her like forever.
"There are some government records I have never been able to access, despite the connections I"ve made over the years. I just know his name is in there somewhere, but ..."
"I"m sorry."
Lewis nodded. "Losing him has been the sorrow of my life, Wallis. So I appreciate your sadness and frustration. But I"ve handled thousands of cases for the society and there is something I have learned. There are worse things than not knowing, my dear. Answering your question might seem like the most important thing in the world, but it is not. If you place your quest ahead of everything else in your life, you will come to regret it."
Wally thought about this. "Good speech. Does anyone ever listen?"
"No," said Lewis, smiling a little at Wally"s feistiness. "By the time people arrive at our door, they are usually h.e.l.l-bent. Nothing can stop them."
"Like me," Wally said.
"Like you," Lewis agreed.
"I"ll do this on my own, but I"m not a detective or anything," Wally said, feeling herself grasping now. "These resources of yours, can you hook me up with some of those?"
"I"m afraid not," he answered, firm but sympathetic. "The situation is this, Wallis: over a long time-more than half a century now-we"ve helped a great many people, from all walks of life. All professions, all sectors of society. We"re a nonprofit organization and don"t accept fees for what we do. However, those we have helped often volunteer to become contributors of another kind."
"Oh," Wally said, getting it, "your clients become your sources?"
Lewis nodded. "We have a.s.sociates inside law enforcement, in the government, the State Department, the judiciary. Intelligence agencies in several countries. Even some in the commercial sector who, in these days of cyber-communities and data mining and so forth, have access to more private information than all the others combined. Those who help us are often taking great risks. They violate laws and oaths and contracts to help in our searches."
"I see."
"We a.s.sure complete anonymity to all our sources, obviously. They are like a family to us, really. You understand?"
There was no argument left for Wally to make, and again she fought back her feelings of frustration, determined to show Lewis that this setback would not defeat her. Wally took out a piece of paper and wrote down Benjamin Hatch"s name and added, Entrepreneur. Possibly knew Yalena Mayakova in Russia, in the year 1992, or so. She pa.s.sed the note to Lewis.
"You can add this to my file, anyway," she said, "in case something else comes up and you can make a connection."
Lewis took the note and read it. "I"ll do what I can, Wallis. I will review your file as well to see if anything can be updated. We will never stop looking."
"Neither will I," Wally said. She walked to the door and Lewis rose from his own chair to show her out. He stayed in the doorway to watch her go, and after a few steps she had a thought and turned back toward him. "I"m sorry about your son." She meant it.
He shrugged. "Get on with other things, Wallis. Choose the life you want. Don"t lose yourself in this search."
Wally just smiled, a little sadly, understanding on some level that Lewis"s advice was wise and halfway regretting that she would not be able to follow it.
She shook Lewis"s hand and left the office, heading back down the stairs and onto Lexington Avenue. Wally was about to turn the corner on 92nd Street when she glanced back at the building she had just left. In a window upstairs stood Lewis Jordan, teacup still in hand, watching her go. They exchanged small waves, and then Wally turned away, headed for her bus stop.
Late that night, Wally was awakened by the sound of her cell phone vibrating on the floor of the walkway, high above the bank. She stirred and checked the phone"s display. It read unknown caller.
"h.e.l.lo?"
"Did you know, Ursula is the patron saint of orphans?" It was Lewis Jordan.
"I didn"t know," Wally answered.
"I believe she is watching over you."
Join the club, thought Wally.
"That"s great, Lewis," she said. "I"ll take all the help I can get."
"I shouldn"t be sharing information with you, Wally, but it occurs to me that I"ve been following the rules of this process for fifty years and I am no closer to finding my son. I"m still alone."
"I really am sorry for that, Lewis." Wally could hear the frustration and sadness in Lewis"s voice, and sensed that he was struggling with a difficult choice. She remained quiet, hoping he would decide in her favor.
"The Benjamin Hatch you"re looking for died three years ago in a traffic accident," said Lewis.
Wally"s heart sank. Her best lead for finding Yalena was lost.
"He was survived by two sons from an early marriage," Lewis continued. "Robert and Andrew. Their mother died from ovarian cancer when they were very young. The sons live together in their family home now. It"s not far away. I tried to reach them, but they did not return my calls, so ..." Lewis coughed. "By the society"s rules, I should not have told you any of this."
"Thank you so much, Lewis," Wally said, grateful to him and feeling a rush of excitement that she would have a good lead to follow the next day. "I promise you won"t regret it."
Wally found a pen and paper in her shoulder bag and Lewis dictated the street address and phone number of the Hatch home, located in a place called Shelter Island.
NINE.
Wally tried the number-with her cell set on speaker phone so the others could listen in-and it rang six times before the line picked up.
"Yes?" came a man"s voice on the other end of the line.
"h.e.l.lo. Is this the Hatch home? I"m trying to reach either Andrew or Robert Hatch."
"This is Andrew." The voice was impatient.
"Mr. Hatch, my name is Wallis Stoneman. I"m the daughter of a woman named Yalena Mayakova. Does that name mean anything to you?"
After a brief pause, he answered simply, "No."
"Are you sure? She"s from Russia. I"m fairly sure she had some connection with your father, maybe during the time he was doing business over there?"
There was a long moment of silence on the other end of the line.
"He"s gone."
"Your father? Yes, I know ... I"m very sorry for your loss," Wally stammered, feeling a twinge of panic as she sensed that Andrew Hatch was ready to hang up on her. "It"s just that I"m trying to locate Yalena, and I was hoping you might have heard your father mention her-"
"We don"t know anything about Russia. We have no connection with his business, or any of the Emerson people."
"I understand, but if there"s anything-"
"I have nothing for you," the man said, and hung up.
Wally and the others were quiet for a moment.
"That is a guy," said Jake, "who knows an a.s.s-load more than he was ready to talk about."
"No s.h.i.t," said Ella. "And what"s this Emerson thing? He said "we have no connection with any of the Emerson people.""
"I have no clue," Wally said, feeling the rush of having another lead. "That name didn"t come up with the article about his business."
"You"ve gotta confront this guy," said Tevin, "and his brother."
"No doubt," Wally said.
The four of them set off early the next day and rode the Jline all the way to Jamaica-the end of the line-where they boarded the Long Island Railroad headed east. The two-hour ride to the Greenport station would leave them just a few steps away from the ferry to Shelter Island, where the Hatches" house could be found. The four of them settled in for the ride, having most of an entire car to themselves so they could all take window seats.
Wally had experience in the Hamptons, having taken several family vacations on the beach over the years, but for the others the train ride was an eye-opener. The view along the way offered glimpses of sprawling beachfront properties and enormous mansions. Jake, Ella, and Tevin jumped back and forth from the right side windows to the left, pointing out homes that seemed to grow more ostentatious the farther up the coast they traveled.
Ella slid onto the seat beside Wally.
"You"ve stayed in houses like that?" she asked.
Wally looked out the window to what looked like a fifty-room behemoth on the sh.o.r.eline.
"Maybe not that big."
"That"s gotta be insanely nice inside, right?"
"Sure. But do they have a Trojan War mosaic on their bedroom ceiling? I think not."
"Losers," Ella agreed. And then she was quiet for a moment more. "It doesn"t take all that to make a home, anyway. Any little s.p.a.ce could be one."
"Yeah."
"Maybe we could do something ... like that."
"Like what?"
"Get an actual place together," Ella said. She made a show of mentioning the idea casually but Wally picked up on it. Ella had given this some real thought. "Not a big deal. Just a place where we paid rent, official-like."
Ella kept her eyes focused out the train window, pretending that she wasn"t hanging on Wally"s response.
"Yeah," Wally said, caught off guard, a weird little itch of resistance in the pit of her stomach. "We could definitely talk about that."
"If we got jobs, we could do it. I saw at Starbucks that they"ll train you to do all those barista things, making the lattes and caps and everything. I bet I could do that."
"For sure you could."
Ella nodded and let it drop. Wally could feel that she had disappointed Ella by not jumping on board, but she didn"t know what else to say. Nothing in her life seemed fixed-it all felt like chaos, in fact-and she didn"t want to tell Ella any lies. It made Wally sad that she couldn"t offer more. She reached out and held Ella"s hand, fingers entwined, but the two of them didn"t speak again for the rest of the ride.
It was one o"clock in the afternoon when the four of them stepped off the train at Greenport, the small station at the end of the railroad"s Main Line. The day was sunny but cool, a chilly wind blowing off the ocean to the east. Wally had checked the ferry schedule online-it ran every half hour or so, starting just before six in the morning and ending before midnight-and their timing appeared to be perfect. The dock was less than a hundred yards away and the small ferryboat was moored there, looking like it was ready to leave soon.
Wally ducked quickly into a gift shop and bought a detailed map of Shelter Island, then met the others at the dock. There were no other pa.s.sengers waiting and only one car: a beat-up, weathered old Mercedes taxicab that read FANTASY ISLAND TAXI in faded lettering on its door, with a little plastic hula dancer hanging from its rearview mirror. The ferryman waved the crew on board, and the cab rolled onto the auto section. The ferry tooted its horn and pulled away from the dock, headed off on its short journey across Greenport Harbor. Wally joined the others at the bow. Tevin wore a wide grin as the ferry lumbered across the bay.
"First boat ride," he said.
"Me too," said Ella. "Are we gonna set seasick and hurl?" Her gleeful expression suggested that she might not mind.
Wally saw the excitement in their faces, and it felt good. She was anxious about what would happen on the island, but sharing the simple experience of a ferry ride with her friends already made it seem worthwhile.
The cabdriver got out to smoke. He was a local guy, maybe twenty years old, with curly orange hair, wearing a ratty cable-knit fisherman"s sweater under a down vest. The guy had a relaxed confidence to him, and he was clearly in his element. As he smoked, he watched the crew for a moment, then spoke up.
"You need a ride," the cabdriver said in Wally"s direction, not asking.
Wally regarded him for a moment and then nodded. The driver nodded back and leaned against the hood of his cab, looking out over the railing as Shelter Island approached just ahead. The small harbor had at least a dozen sailboats moored there, but all of them looked battened down, probably to remain unused for another six months at least. Soon they reached the Shelter Island dock and the crew climbed into the backseat of the Mercedes cab.
"Where to?" the young driver asked.
"You know where Crichton Road is?" Wally asked.
The driver nodded. He steered the cab out of the marina and onto Ferry Road, which would lead them all the way across to the northeast section of the island. They pa.s.sed through a very small commercial area with a grocery store, a video store, a gas station, and two restaurants. All of it was quiet. Wally followed their progress on the map she"d bought, familiarizing herself with the layout of the island and locating the area where the Hatches" house was.
"You live on this island?" Tevin asked.
The cabbie shook his head. "Nah. My grandmother does, and I come over a few times a week to take her grocery shopping. They don"t let her drive anymore."
"It"s kinda quiet," said Ella.
"Nine months out of the year, yeah, but jammed during the summer."
"Do you know-"
"The Hatch brothers?" He cut her off. "Not really. They keep to themselves, mostly."
Wally felt a little surge of adrenaline in her system, caught off guard by the cabbie"s knowledge that she and the crew were on their way to the Hatch home. She regarded him suspiciously in the rearview mirror, and he read her expression.
"Crichton Road is small," the driver said. "With only seven or eight houses along there. All summer people except for the Hatches."
"Oh."
After just a three-mile traverse of the island, never traveling faster than thirty-five miles per hour, they turned onto Crichton Road, which split off at a Y-intersection. Beside the Crichton Road sign was another sign, pointed in the other direction, which read MASHOMACK PRESERVE ENTRANCE. Wally checked the map and saw that the preserve covered a large swath of land, and it looked as though all the houses on the eastern side of Crichton Road would border up against the preserve grounds. This section of Shelter Island was an especially private place.
The cab turned onto Crichton and drove on for just fifty yards before pulling over on the right side of the road.
"That"s it," the driver said.