Lincoln Perry 02 - Sorrow's Anthem by Michael Koryta

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home anytime this evening, so I didn’t bother to call him. The
rest of the unfortunate Corbetts in town got the Lincoln Perry
dinner-hour-telemarketing approach to investigation, however.
Of the first five names on my list, only three were home, and
none of them had a relative named Mitch. One woman, Dorene
Corbett, responded to the question by asking if I was planning to
reunite her with her birth father. When I said that wasn’t the case,
she was disappointed.
“I thought maybe you were from one of those reunion shows,”
she said. “You know, like the ones they’ve got on Oprah now and
then? I like those shows.”
“So you’ve never met your father?” I said, trying to follow her
conversation.
“Of course I have. But I thought maybe you were looking for
someone with my name who hasn’t.”
“I see.
“There’s another Dorene Corbett,” she said. “I got her name
off the Internet once. But she lives in Georgia. Try Georgia,
okay?”
I assured her I would try Georgia, then hung up gratefully and
continued working through my list. On the seventh try, I found a
gentleman who had indeed heard of Mitch Corbett.
“Listen,” Randy Corbett said as soon as I’d asked my question,
“I’m tired of this. I don’t talk to Mitch no more and he don’t talk to
me. We never seen eye to eye on a damn thing, I don’t know where
he is, and I don’t care. Haven’t talked to him in more than a year.”
“But you are related to him?”
“I’m his brother, you jackass. You don’t know that, then why the
hell you calling me?”
“When I asked you if you knew Mitch, you said you were tired
of this. Has someone else been asking about him?”
“Just the police,” he said. “Shows what kind of good family I
got, only time I hear about my own brother is when the police are
looking for him. My mother’s probably rolling in her grave right
now.”
“When did the police ask about him, sir?”
“This morning.” He paused. “And if you’re not one of them,
who the hell are you?”
“A private investigator.”
“Can you tell me what he’s done? 'Cause the police wouldn’t.”
“As far as I know, he hasn’t done anything other than blow off
work. I’m just trying to track him down because he might know
something that could be useful to me in another matter. Are you
sure you don’t have any idea where he would have gone?”
“Absolutely not. We ain’t what you’d call close brothers, mister.
And I’m all the family that old boy’s got.”
“Did he have good friends out of town? Someplace he liked to
vacation, maybe?”
Randy Corbett let out a snort of derision so long that I thought
he might faint from lack of oxygen before he finished. Apparently
my question had been some kind of funny.
“Someplace he liked to vacation,” he said at last. “That’s good.
Mister, Mitch ain’t got enough money to make it to Sandusky, let
alone someplace worth going. I can’t tell you where he is, but I’d be
mighty surprised if it’s any farther away than the east side.”
    I’d hardly finished my Cleveland Corbett roundup when the
phone rang. It was Amy.
“How you holding up?” she said.
“I’m up,” I said. “That’s all you can ask, some days.”
“Right. You had dinner yet?”
“Hadn’t even considered it. Hell, I never ate lunch, either.”
“How about I pick up a pizza and stop by?”
“Sounds good. You got something on your mind or just worried
about me?”
“I’m always worried about you,” she said. “But I’d like to talk
some things over, as well. Maybe you’d care to tell me a little more
about your relationship with Gradduk? Like why you hadn’t talked
to him in eight years?”
“We can go into detail when you get here, Ace. For now all
you need to know is I went cop and he went con. Worlds collided.”
    Amy
arrived with a box of pizza and a bag of breadsticks about
twenty minutes later, and we sat in the living room with the lights turned low, eating off paper plates. I knew Amy