Read Online Photo Finish (9781101537510) by Sara Paretsky - Free Book Online Page B

breath. “It must have been hard for him, for Hunter—my—my dad—because the next thing I knew, I was at school in Charleston, living with my grandmother, and I never saw him again.”
    â€œWhat was your mother’s name? Birth name, I mean.”
    He’d gone away to some private world; my question jolted him back to my office. “Oh. Helen. Helen—Alder.”
    â€œAnd why do you think your father’s in Chicago?”
    â€œThe agency. The agency where he used to sell his pictures, they told me they’d last heard from him here.”
    I had to work to pry more information from him: The agency was a French bureau. First, he claimed not to remember the name, but when I handed the hundreds back across the table, he came up with it: Sur Place, on Boulevard Saint-Germaine in Paris. No, he didn’t know his father’s social security number. Or his date of birth. He and his mother had spent so much time apart from his father that ordinary holidays and birthdays weren’t times they had in common. As for where his father came from, young Hunter was similarly ignorant.
    â€œMy dad never talked to me about his childhood that I can remember. And my mother’s family declared him hors la loi , so that—”
    â€œDeclared him ooo-la-la?”
    â€œWhat? Oh, hors la loi —an outlaw, you know. They never talked about him.”
    The client was staying at the Hotel Trefoil, a tiny place on Scott Street where they unpack your luggage and hand you a hot towel when you walk in so you can wipe the day’s sweat from your brow. If he could afford the Trefoil, my fee wouldn’t make a dent in his loose change. I told him that I’d do what I could and that I’d get back to him in a few days. He thanked me with that tantalizing familiar smile.
    â€œWhat do you do yourself, Mr. Davenport? I feel I should recognize you.”
    He looked startled. In fact, I thought he looked almost frightened, but in the pools of lamplight, I couldn’t be certain. Anyway, a second later he was laughing.
    â€œI don’t do anything worth recording. I’m not an actor or an Internet genius that you should know me.”
    He left on that note, making me wonder how he afforded the Trefoil. Perhaps his Charleston grandmother had left him money. I laid the five hundreds in a circle on my desktop and ran a marking pen over them. They weren’t counterfeit, but of course fairy’s gold vanishes overnight. Just in case, I’d drop them at the bank on my way home.
    The Internet readily found the phone number for Sur Place, which cheered me: Young Davenport had given me information so unwillingly that I’d been afraid he’d manufactured the agency’s name. It was nine at night in Paris; the night operator at the photo agency didn’t speak English. I think he was telling me to call tomorrow, when Monsieur Duval would be in, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure.
    It was only two in Chicago, and Sherman Tucker, the photo editor at the Herald-Star , was at his desk taking calls. “Vic, darling, you’ve found a corpse and I get the first look at it.”
    â€œNot even close.” Sherman has a passion for the old noir private eyes. He keeps hoping I’ll behave like Race Williams or the Continental Op and start stumbling over bodies every time I walk out the front door. “Ever use a stringer named Hunter Davenport, or heard anything about him? He used to freelance in Africa but someone thinks he might have moved to Chicago.”
    â€œHunter Davenport? I never heard of the guy but he gets more popular by the hour. You’re the second person today asking for him.”
    â€œDid you refer an extremely beautiful young man to me?” I asked.
    Sherman laughed. “I don’t look at guys’ legs, V.I. But, yeah, there was a kid in here earlier. I told him if he didn’t want to take a missing person to the cops to go to