"Lowell lost track of his wife, Norma this would be September's mother "years and years ago." He says he didn't go looking for her when he came out of the service and "I guess if she ever went lookin' for me she couldn't've looked too hard, because if she did I never heard nothin' about it and she never found me." He righteously assumes that she and the boy received the allotment checks that he knows were deducted from his army pay, but he doesn't know that.
"The VA computer records consist of entries manually copied onto magnetic tape from card-files during the changeover from the keypunch system that took place years and years ago. They indicate that allotment checks made out to forty-four military dependents named Chappelle went to a total of seventy-one addresses in the US, Canada and the Dominican Republic during the years that our boy was in the army fighting for his country and the democratic way of life. The only one that seems to have any connection with him at all was a Gloria Chappelle at an address in Atlantic Beach, Florida. "Gloria" was his mother's name, but he has no recollection either of her ever having lived in Atlantic Beach or of himself ever having directed that she be sent any allotment from his pay at that address. Or any other one. He said he hadn't seen her since he was about six years old, and that was in Saint Thomas in the Virgin Islands. So: our first dead end in the pursuit of the history of Lowell Chappelle.
"The last he heard of his wife, Norma, she was living somewhere in Illinois and she was working in a factory "that made things." What things he doesn't know. "Could've been pumps." He believes that was about "twenty, thirty years ago," but he's not sure. He thinks she may be dead. He says she had asthma, or maybe it was TB, and it gave her a lot of trouble, so it was hard for her to keep a job.
"The other son's named Rutherford. He'd be about sixteen or seventeen by now. He lived with his mother in the Santurce section of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Lowell's information about him's very old and comes entirely from letters he received some time ago, while he was in prison, first from a social worker and then from a parish priest in Puerto Rico. They seemed to be under the impression Lowell was a wealthy man who owned several restaurants and clubs in New York, and hoped he would see fit to contribute financially to the support of his son and his son's mother.
"This was before the States all started enacting those long-arm Dead-beat-Dad statutes that've become so popular in recent years and just about drive us nuts in the federal system, trying to keep track of all the warrants that're issued under them that we're supposed to enforce. Not that I don't think they're a good idea, but that's a different matter. It seems to me as though the States ought have their own people to do all the work it entails. We're already understaffed and overworked, before they started this.
"Anyway, Lowell concedes the possibility that the social worker may've gotten this impression, that he was a wealthy fella, from the boy's mother, who may very well have gotten it from him, during his only visit to the island shortly after the four-hundred' thirty-thousand-dollar bank job back in Seventy-eight that was alleged to have been his most recent effort at least so far as anyone's proven so far. The one that landed him in jail out at FCI McNeil Island before he got out and came here, destined for my attention.
"Lowell of course continues to maintain his innocence of that charge.
He does admit that during his visit to Puerto Rico when he knocked up the lady in Santurce he had quite a lot of currency with him, much of which he lost playing blackjack in the casino at the El San Juan Hotel.
"Now, this woman that your Park Rangers surfaced in the woods back on Saturday night, this Linda Shepard: as I understand it, she claims to be Chappelle's daughter. It's possible she is but that detail slipped his mind. Details have a way of slipping where Lowell's mind's concerned. Or perhaps he just kept that fact from me, chose not to tell me for some reason of his own or for no reason at all. I couldn't find Lowell today after you called so I could ask him that. Got no idea where the hell he is, and neither does anybody else I know who knows him. Janet LeClerc's was one of the numbers I called, that you give to me there, Amby. Got no answer from her."
"She's probably down at the convenience store there," Merrion said, 'stocking up on butts and scratch tickets."
"Dunno," Paradisio said. "All's I know is that I couldn't get ahold of her, either, to even ask, so I don't know if they're still shacked up.
Even though you told her she hadda make him leave. But still, pending when we find Lowell and get a chance to ask him a few things about this woman claims to be his daughter: I can't find either from our files or from what Daggett'd tell me Louella over DSS. You know, there are times when I think I really hate that woman.
"Seriously," he said, when Merrion laughed. "I don't know if you'd be familiar with her, with this woman, Judge. But I do know my friend Amby here is, and that's why he's laughing now. He knows how much fun it is when you've got a question that you need an answer to, right away. It'll take you about two or three days to get it through channels, maybe even back and forth with Washington, much more tim en you've got. Louella could answer it for you in about fifteen seconds if she would, but she wont. She says she can't, but the real reason is she wont. She just hates giving out information. I don't know what it is, protecting her clients against us? Doesn't make any sense; we're trying to help them. But if you can get the time of day out of that one, you're doing better'n I am."
"Sam always speaks very lowly of Louella, Judge," Merrion said to Cavanaugh. "I've told him many times he shouldn't do it, but he just wont seem to stop."
"For the record, Sam," Cavanaugh said, 'she wont tell me anything either. If instead of dumping the chore on Amby, I pick up the phone and make the call myself, the result is the same. I get the same answer both of you get. The woman was born saying: "No." No wonder she's never been married. She's probably still a virgin."
"Yeah, well, I guess I'm glad to hear that," Paradisio said. "At least now I know it's not just me, not just Feds and all, some grudge she's got against us. Makes me feel a little better, know at least I'm not alone.
"But anyway, Lowell gave us the Shepard woman's address as the place where he'd be living before he got out of jail last March and ended up here, lucky us. He told us she's a niece of his. He definitely did not say she's his daughter. But according to him she'd be thirty-four not thirty-two, as she told the Park Rangers. She's a ninth-grade dropout from a school in Lockport, New York. Those three kids she had with her all named after movie stars are by three different fathers.
'"His niece," now?" Cavanaugh said.
"Yeah, "niece," Paradisio said. "Look, I know I don't look too good on this. I didn't do that great a job here. But my guess is she isn't his niece. My guess's that there's some connection between where he was, right before he robbed that last bank with the machine gun after he got out from McNeil Island. He's got some connection out there in New York State that we really don't know all that much about yet. We're not that far along. And then when he got out last spring he came back here and moved in with this Linda Shepard and her three kids, down in Springfield. This Ronald Bennett that you tell me was with her: we don't know where he came from.