A cursory survey of the mailboxes suggested that this was a twenty-unit complex. Judging from the numbered doors, Apartment 9 was on the second floor. I made my way up the stairs, which consisted of iron risers with pebbly rectangular slabs of poured concrete forming the treads. At the top I took a moment to reconsider. As nearly as I could tell, Solana was living at Gus’s full-time, but if the Franklin address was still her permanent residence, she might come and go. If I ran into her, she’d know she was under scrutiny, which was not good.
I returned to the ground floor, where I’d seen a white plastic sign on the door to Apartment 1, indicating the manager was living on the premises. I knocked and waited. Eventually a fellow opened the door. He was in his fifties, short and rotund, with pudgy features in a face that age had sucked into the collar of his shirt. The corners of his mouth were turned down and he had a double-chin that made his jaw look as formless and flat as a frog’s.
I said, “Hi. Sorry to bother you, but I’m looking for Solana Rojas and wondered if she was still living here.”
In the background I heard someone call, “Norman, who’s that?”
Over his shoulder he called, “Just a minute, Princess, I’m in a conversation here.”
“I know that,” she called, “I asked who it was.”
To me he said, “Nobody named Rojas in the building unless it’s someone subletting, which we don’t allow.”
“Norman, did you hear me?”
“Come see for yourself. I can’t be yelling back and forth like this. It’s rude.”
A moment later his wife appeared, also short and round, but twenty years younger with a mop of dyed yellow hair.
“She’s looking for a woman named Solana Rojas.”
“We don’t have a Rojas.”
“I told her the same thing. I thought it might be someone you knew.”
I looked at the application again. “This says Apartment Nine.”
Princess made a face. “Oh, her. The lady in Nine moved three weeks ago-her and that lump of a son-but the name’s not Rojas. It’s Tasinato. She’s Turkish or Greek, something of the kind.”
“Cristina Tasinato?”
“Costanza. And don’t get us started. She left us with hundreds of dollars in damages we’ll never recoup.”
“How long did she live here?”
The two exchanged a look and he said, “Nine years? Maybe ten. She and her son were already tenants when I took over as the manager and that was two years ago. I never had occasion to check her place until she was gone. The kid had kicked a big hole in the wall, which must have created a draft because she was using old newspapers as insulation, stuffed between the studs. The dates on the papers went back to 1978. A family of squirrels had taken up residence and we’re still trying to get them out.”
Princess said, “The building was sold two months ago and the new owner raised the rent, which is why she moved. We’ve got tenants flocking off the premises like rats.”
“She didn’t leave a forwarding address?”
Norman shook his head. “Wish I could help you out, but she disappeared overnight. We went in and the place stunk so bad, we had to have a crew that usually handles crime scenes come in…”
Princess chimed in, “Like if a body’s been rotting on the floor for a week and the boards are soaked with that bubbly-looking scum?”
“Got it,” I said. “Can you describe her?”
Norman was at a loss. “I don’t know, average. Kinda middle-aged, dark…”
“Glasses?”
“Don’t think so. She might have wore them to read.”
“Height, weight?”
Princess said, “On the thin side, a little chunky through the middle, but not as big as me.” She laughed. “The son you couldn’t miss.”
“She called him Tiny, sometimes Tonto,” Norman said. “Babyfaced-great big hulk of a guy…”
“Real big,” she said. “And not right in the head. He’s mostly deaf so he talked all in grunts. His mom acted like she understood him, but none of the rest of us did. He’s an animal. Prowling the neighborhood at night. Scared the crap out of me more than once.”
Norman said, “Couple of women were attacked. He beat the shit out of this one gal. Hurt her so bad, she nearly had a nervous breakdown.”
“Charming,” I said. I thought about the goon I’d seen while I was cruising through Gus’s house. Solana had been charging Gus’s estate for the services of an orderly, who might well be her kid. “You wouldn’t happen to have the tenant application she filled out when she moved in.”
“You’d have to ask the new owner. The building’s thirty years old. I know there’s a bunch of boxes in storage from back when, but who knows what’s in ’em.”
“Why don’t you give her Mr. Compton’s phone number?”
Startled, I said, “Richard Compton?”
“Yeah, him. He also owns that building across the alley.”
“I do business with him all the time. I’ll call and ask if he objects to my searching the old files. I’m sure he won’t mind. In the meantime, if you hear from Ms. Tasinato, would you let me know?” I took out a business card, which Norman read and then passed to his wife.
“You think her and this Rojas woman are the same?” she asked.
“Looks that way to me.”
“She’s a bad one. Sorry we can’t tell you where she went.”
“Never mind. I know.”
Once the door was closed, I stood for a moment, relishing the information. Score one for me. Things were finally making sense. I’d done a background check on Solana Rojas, but in reality I was dealing with someone else-first name Costanza or Cristina, last name Tasinato. At some point there’d been a switch in ID, but I wasn’t sure when. The real Solana Rojas might not even be aware that someone had borrowed her résumé, her credentials, and her good name.
When I returned to my car, there was a white Saab parked behind me and a fellow was standing on the sidewalk, his hands in his pockets, looking at the Mustang with a discerning eye. He wore jeans and a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches: middle-aged, neatly clipped brown beard laced with gray, wide mouth, a mole near his nose and another on his cheek. “This yours?”
“It is. Are you a fan?”
“Yes ma’am. It’s a hell of a car. You happy with it?”
“More or less. Are you in the market?”
“I might be.” He patted his jacket pocket and I almost expected him to take out a pack of cigarettes or a business card. “Are you Kinsey Millhone, by any chance?”
“Yes. Do I know you?”
“No, but I believe this is yours,” he said, offering a long white envelope with my name scrawled across the front.
Puzzled, I took it and he touched my arm, saying, “Baby, you’ve been served.”
I felt my blood pressure drop and my heart skipped a beat. My soul and my body neatly detached from one another, like cars in a freight train when the coupling’s been pulled. I felt as if I were standing right next to myself, looking on. My hands were cold but shook only slightly as I opened the envelope and removed the Notice of Hearing and Temporary Restraining Order.
The name of the person asking for protection was Solana Rojas. I was named as the person to be restrained, my sex, height, weight, hair color, home address, and other relevant facts neatly typed in. The information was more or less accurate except for the weight, mine being ten pounds less. The hearing had been scheduled for February 9-Tuesday of the following week. In the meantime, under Personal Conduct Orders, I was forbidden to harass, attack, strike, threaten, assault, hit, follow, stalk, destroy personal property, keep under surveillance, or block the movements of Solana Rojas. I was also ordered to stay at least one hundred feet away from her, her home, and her vehicle-the low number of feet apparently taking into account the fact that I lived right next door. I was also forbidden to own, possess, have, buy or try to buy, receive or try to receive, or in any other way get a gun or a firearm. At the bottom of the paper in white letters on a block of black, it said This is a Court Order. Like I hadn’t guessed as much.