The Question of the Absentee Father Read online

  Kaplan made a sound like a balloon slowly losing its air. “This again?”

  “I have never asked for anything else,” I pointed out. “I have forty thousand dollars that the young woman in your house gave my associate and me as a gift. You can have it back. But first you must set up a meeting between me and Reuben Hoenig.”

  “I can’t do that,” he said.

  I looked at Ms. Washburn. She smiled just a bit and nodded.

  I disconnected the call.

  “That was very rude of me,” I said.

  Ms. Washburn chuckled lightly. “Sometimes you have to be rude to get the results you need.”

  The iPhone rang almost immediately. I reached for the screen, but Ms. Washburn held her finger up. “Let him wait a few rings,” she said.

  I must have cocked an eyebrow, which is an expression I’m told I exhibit when surprised by something. Ms. Washburn put her hand on mine. “It’s okay, Samuel. He’s not going away.”

  The phone rang four more times before Ms. Washburn nodded again. “Now.”

  I exhaled and pushed the screen to begin the call. “Hello?”

  This time the man’s voice was a little higher and sounded less patient. “You hung up on me!” I thought the remark irrational. Did George Kaplan or his surrogate believe that I was not aware I had ended the previous call abruptly? So I said nothing. “What’s wrong with you?”

  I am aware that some people believe I suffer from a disorder of the neurological system. Others think I have a mental illness. There are those uninformed individuals who refer to my personality traits as a “disease.” But I felt there was no point in detailing my Asperger’s Syndrome for George Kaplan.

  “I am in excellent health, I assure you,” I told him. “Now. When and where will I meet Reuben Hoenig?”

  “I’ll find you,” the man countered. “I’ll find you and take back the money and then I will do something. To you or to your girlfriend.”

  I looked at Ms. Washburn, who pointed to herself. Then she shook her head in a negative fashion.

  “I have no girlfriend,” I assured Kaplan. “But I can guarantee that even if you find my associate and me you will never see a dollar of the money we have in our possession. I have the ability to think of hiding places no one else would ever consider. Even my associate would be unable to recover your cash and I certainly will not tell you where I have secured it, until I have met and spoken with Reuben Hoenig.” This might be the place to disclose that I hold no special talents as a result of Asperger’s Syndrome. But I was fairly certain Kaplan did not know that.

  “I can make you tell me.” That was not even a credible threat but it did point to an operation considerably more illicit than either Ms. Washburn or I had imagined. I felt a slight tremor in my digestive system but blinked twice to banish the thought.

  “Mr. Kaplan, if that is your real name,” I said, “you are a businessman. Your sole concern is to create a profit. And the best way to do so is to operate efficiently.”

  “Yeah. And the most efficient way for me to get that money back is to find you and beat it out of you. So expect that.”

  I anticipated Kaplan disconnecting quickly so I spoke immediately. “That is not your best option as a businessman,” I replied. “It is inefficient, largely because I will not tell you where the money is being kept. I will banish the location from my own mind and forget it, making it impossible, no matter how dire the situation becomes, for me to accommodate you.” This, again, was a lie based on the proposition that Kaplan had no idea what Asperger’s Syndrome might entail. I gave him no time to consider the preposterous fiction I was creating. “But if you produce Reuben Hoenig I will be glad to give you back every dollar immediately and you can retrieve your property with no loss of time or efficiency. It is, if I am correct in my terminology, a win-win situation.” I looked toward Ms. Washburn, who was smiling and raising a thumb in approval.

  There was a pause on Kaplan’s end of the conversation, and I became confident that the ploy had worked.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll get you Hoenig. But you’re going to have to wait until tomorrow.”

  Normally I would have considered that capitulation a victory, but with Mother unresponsive and almost three thousand miles between us I had no time for Kaplan’s hesitation. “Why?” I asked.

  “I have to locate the guy and convince him to meet with you,” he answered. “I have to set up a place and a time that I can be sure won’t involve … government agencies I want to keep out of the situation. I can’t just make him appear out of the air.”

  I looked at my wristwatch. I wear a wristwatch despite having the time displayed on my iPhone because I do not have to push a button to make the correct time appear and because it was my custom long before I began carrying a cellular phone. The time now was 11:56 a.m.

  “You have until five p.m. today,” I said. “If I don’t hear back from you before then with a suitable rendezvous arranged before nine p.m. this evening, I will break off all communication between us and disappear with your money. Is that clear?” I knew the statement was simple to understand but I had heard that last phrase uttered many times when people were attempting to make their points emphatically.

  This time Kaplan did not argue, although I felt it was against his nature to accept my terms so quickly. That made me suspicious. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll call you before five. Make sure you have the money with you.”

  If his intention was to find Ms. Washburn and me and force us to give him the forty thousand dollars without an interview with Reuben Hoenig, it was necessary for me to disabuse him of that notion. “The money is in a safe place right now,” I said. “After I have met with Reuben Hoenig I will tell you its location.”

  Kaplan disconnected.

  “He is no longer there,” I said to Ms. Washburn. “Does that mean he is not accepting my terms?”

  “No,” she answered. “It means he knows he can’t argue with you and that makes him angry. Be careful with this guy, Samuel. He’s not the kind who takes losing kindly.”

  That struck me as irrelevant. “He is not losing,” I suggested. “He is going to get what he wants. We will give him back the money his employee accidentally gave us.”

  “But he has to give you something for it, and he doesn’t like it. Just be careful, okay?” She turned her attention to the dashboard of the Kia Soul. “Where are we going?”

  I consulted my watch again. Six minutes had elapsed since I had checked most recently. “Perhaps we should seek out a place to have lunch. Just Nice?”

  Unexpectedly, Ms. Washburn shook her head. “I know what you want, Samuel, but we’re not going to eat all our meals in Los Angeles at the same restaurant. And I’m not going to spend the next three days looking for an Applebee’s. You saw that things worked out well at the place I picked the last time, right?”

  I had to admit she was being accurate.

  “Good. So you’re just going to have to trust me. I saw a little place on the way here this morning. Let’s go.” And before I could suggest otherwise, she had engaged the Drive gear and was navigating the vehicle back into traffic.

  When we were settled in a small, redolent delicatessen called Andy’s, I had quelled my rising anxiety with a look at the menu, which indicated there were items served in the establishment that were not foreign to my experience, although many certainly were. Ms. Washburn asked for a hot pastrami sandwich, which I knew I would not want to see while I settled on a turkey sandwich with lettuce and mayonnaise, similar to what I eat for lunch at Mother’s house most days.

  That was when I tried Mother’s cellular phone again. The voice mail did not immediately pick up, which meant that she had at least turned on the phone at some time since I had last called. But it was still taking her messages and she was not answering the phone when it rang.

  “Maybe I should call the pol
ice,” I said to Ms. Washburn.

  “They do sometimes check in on seniors,” she said, considering. “Is that something that would make your mother uncomfortable?”

  It was a valid question. I thought about the answer for a moment. “I don’t know. I am certain, though, that if she is in some distress I would not be comfortable having ignored the situation because I was concerned she would be inconvenienced. I am going to call the Piscataway police department.”

  “I think you’re probably right,” Ms. Washburn said. “I assume you checked your own voice mail to make sure she hasn’t called you? It is odd that she hasn’t looked in on you yet.”

  How Mother could see me from New Jersey when I was in Canoga Park, California, eluded my reason. “I haven’t checked,” I admitted. “It hadn’t occurred to me that Mother might call. She knows where she is.”

  I looked at the voice mail application on my iPhone and found there was indeed a message from Mother, which made me realize how anxious I had been about it. My stomach loosened itself and I let out a long breath. I activated the playback for Mother’s voice mail message.

  “Hello, Samuel,” she had said two hours before, according to the time stamp on the message screen. “This is your mother. Everything’s fine here. I hope you’re doing well in California. Please don’t call for a day or so because my phone is acting very strange and I won’t get your message. You don’t need to worry about me. I’ll get a new phone and call you when I have it, but I probably won’t get out until tomorrow at least. I’ll talk to you soon. I miss you, and I don’t mean to make you feel bad, but I look forward to you coming home. But I’m very proud of you for going and hope you find your father soon. See you in a few days. Okay, bye.”

  She disconnected after that, and I found that against my expectations, I did not feel better after having heard her message.

  Ms. Washburn had clearly seen that emotion in my facial expression. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I think we should get tickets for a flight home today,” I told her. “My mother is in some very serious danger.”

  fifteen

  “I don’t understand,” Ms. Washburn said.

  She had insisted on listening to Mother’s voice mail message and although I thought it was rather personal, I had agreed to let her do so. Now she was sitting opposite me with a pastrami sandwich in front of her, laying untouched like my own lunch before me.

  “Your mother says everything is fine and that you should go ahead and look for your father,” Ms. Washburn continued. “How does that translate into us cancelling the meeting with your father and flying home to rescue her from something she never actually mentioned at all?”

  “How would you characterize Mother’s voice?” I asked.

  Ms. Washburn squinted. “Her voice? She sounded like herself.”

  “I disagree. I believe she sounded tired and weak. I think she sounded like someone who has been deprived of sleep and who had perhaps been coerced into making that phone call to placate my curiosity and concern.”

  Ms. Washburn sat back in her chair. “I did not get that at all,” she said.

  “In addition, the things she said are suspect,” I continued.

  “She said she was fine but missed you,” Ms. Washburn said. “That’s understandable. It’s not a signal that she’s being kept from calling the police to save herself. What time did she make that call?”

  I checked once more. “Two hours and twelve minutes ago,” I told her.

  “That’s before eight in the morning on the East Coast. What time does your mother usually get up?”

  “She cooks breakfast for us most mornings, and as you know, I leave for my office at 8:35 a.m. Mother is usually awake by seven. It would be highly unusual for her to sleep later, if that’s what you were about to suggest.”

  Ms. Washburn smiled at me, not in a gleeful way. I believe the expression was meant to show sympathy or support. It was not one of those I have memorized for Ms. Washburn’s face. “Samuel, I understand your concern,” she said. “I do. But you have to understand that these are not normal conditions. Your mother doesn’t have to get up at seven because she doesn’t need to make breakfast for you. So maybe she slept in a little bit today because she could. That’s all I’m saying. She could have sounded tired because she was tired. There are explanations for everything that’s worrying you. Jumping to the conclusion that she’s in danger is the most extreme reaction you could have. Maybe it’s just because you want to go home.”

  Ms. Washburn understands emotional reactions better than I do. It’s not that people whose behavior is on the autism spectrum don’t have feelings; it is that we are not sure how to express or cope with those emotions so our responses are sometimes disproportional to the situation. It’s also true that we have difficulty deciphering the emotional signals given, consciously or not, by others.

  So when Ms. Washburn offers an opinion on such a subject, I tend to defer to her judgment. It was counterintuitive in this case. I thought Mother was in some kind of difficulty and was trying to hide it from me for reasons I did not know. But Ms. Washburn was correct in her assumption that I was anxious to leave Southern California as soon as possible, and that desire could be clouding my decision.

  “I will assume you are right,” I told her after a moment. “But if I do not hear from Mother tomorrow, I am going to call the Piscataway police department.”

  She nodded. “That’s fair. Now let’s just enjoy our lunch and decide what we’re going to do next.”

  I thought it unlikely I would enjoy the turkey sandwich, but it was necessary to take in nourishment so I ate some more of it. I had purchased a bottle of spring water, reminding me that I had not been exercising every twenty minutes while on the West Coast. It had been physically inconvenient so far but I resolved to look for opportunities as we continued our trip.

  Ms. Washburn was chatting about local tourist attractions, a subject that had not occupied my attention and I was feigning interest—something I had learned to do with Dr. Mancuso that was not rude because the other person did not know I was doing it—when my iPhone rang again.

  I hoped momentarily the call was from Mother but the incoming number was that of the man we knew as George Kaplan. I showed it to Ms. Washburn.

  “I guess you convinced him to act fast,” she said. “There goes the trip to Hollywood Boulevard.”

  I opened the line and immediately Kaplan’s voice came through the iPhone, which I held to my ear because the restaurant was too crowded and noisy to use the speaker function. “Six o’clock tonight,” he said. “The Hollywood Bowl. Parking Lot B. There’s no show there tonight so it’ll be empty.”

  I took on the same persona I’d used the last time I’d spoken to Kaplan. “Six p.m. is acceptable,” I said. “But we are not coming to the parking lot of the Hollywood Bowl where we can’t be seen. I need a public place where my associate and I can be assured there will be no unexpected difficulty when I meet Reuben Hoenig.”

  “What do you think, we’re gonna get you into a parking lot and bump you off ?” Kaplan was actually trying to sound offended after having vaguely threatened Ms. Washburn and me in our previous conversation. “That’s who you think you’re dealing with?”

  “Six p.m. is acceptable,” I repeated. “Not the Hollywood Bowl.”

  Ms. Washburn was looking at me with a quizzical expression; she did not understand my resistance on the point. That was understandable.

  Kaplan made a guttural noise in his throat that sounded vaguely like a dog unhappy with the arrival of the postman. “Fine,” he said. “Not the Hollywood Bowl. Where, then?”

  “Hollywood Boulevard,” I said. “The Chinese Theatre.”

  Ms. Washburn smiled.

  sixteen

  I was not familiar with the Chinese Theatre or Hollywood Boulevard but I was aware of the exhibit outside the the
ater bearing the footprints and handprints (and in some cases, other prints) of film celebrities that has been a tourist attraction there for decades. It is considered an honor in the motion picture business to be “immortalized” in the concrete sidewalk outside the theater. I do not understand the custom nor the explanation; a person is no more immortal when he leaves an impression of his hands and feet in wet cement, a fact easily confirmed by noting that the majority of people so honored are now deceased.

  Ms. Washburn and I had spent the rest of the afternoon devising our plans for the evening. We returned to Canoga Park and conferred in my room at the hotel, then Ms. Washburn had said she needed to rest a bit because of “jet lag” and she went back to her room to do so. I had not noticed a problem with fatigue and therefore did some Internet research on a lingering question from another client and then rechecked the preparations Ms. Washburn and I had made for the meeting with Reuben Hoenig—and one assumed George Kaplan—at the Chinese Theatre. I made two telephone calls, one to Mother without receiving a response, and then attached my iPhone to a charger so I could be sure it would be fully functional when I needed it for the meeting.

  The afternoon felt like it lasted longer than usual, although that is not technically possible. Time passes at a constant rate.

  At thirty minutes past four in the afternoon, Ms. Washburn knocked on the door of my hotel room as planned. Given the astonishing amount of traffic in Los Angeles and our desire to arrive at the destination early it made sense to allot extra time to the trip.

  After navigating US 101 (referred to in the area as “The One-Oh-One”) and its inevitable delays, Ms. Washburn still brought the Kia Soul to a parking garage near the address of the Chinese Theatre with thirty-seven minutes to spare before our meeting. That would give her the time she desired to see the famed concrete slabs laid out in front of the structure itself.

  “I really appreciate your doing this for me, Samuel,” she said as we walked on Hollywood Boulevard past the Kodak Theatre, where I had discovered the Academy Awards are handed out each winter.