“Well, to all intents and purposes—except for legal ones, of course.”

Eggers tilted back in his chair, rested his feet on his desk, and pressed his fingertips together in a thoughtful pose. “Where was he born?”

“In Los Angeles.”

“How about we get his birth certificate reissued and his old one removed? That should solve the problem.”

“How the hell are you going to do that? You can’t just hire some clerk to steal a public record and replace it with a forgery.”

“Well, I suppose you could, but that’s messy. All we need is a judge to order a reissuing of the certificate, for the same reason as we give in Virginia, and along the way, to correct a typographical error with regard to birth date. We should still do the name change in Virginia, because of his school.”

“And what kind of judge are you going to get to do that?”

“One that you and I went to law school with. Remember Carling Steadman?”

“Steadman is a judge in L.A.? I didn’t know that.”

“Then you must not read the alumni journal.”

“I guess not.”

“The firm has had some dealings with him the past few years; he’s always ruled in our favor. And I had dinner with him and his wife when I was in L.A. a few weeks ago. Carling has started a foundation dedicated to the defense of indigents in L.A. County. He doesn’t know it, but I’m going to make a twenty-five-thousand-dollar donation at a fund-raising dinner they’re having next week.”

“The media are going to be a bigger problem in L.A. than they would in Virginia,” Stone pointed out.

“We’ll petition that the boy’s old birth certificate be permanently sealed. No reporter is going to be looking for one belonging to a Peter Barrington.”

“Good point.”

“Leave it with me. How do you want the name to appear on the certificate? You don’t want Calder there, do you?”

“No.” Stone thought for a minute. “Make it Malon Peter Barrington.”

“Your father’s name, as I recall. A happy coincidence.”

“Correct. Better make it Malon Peter Barrington the Second.”

Eggers wrote it down, along with Peter’s new birth date. “I’ll get on it,” he said. “Will Peter need any help with getting into the school? I’ll see if anybody here has a connection.”

“Thank you, yes. I can get Leo Goldman to write a recommendation, too, based on what he’s seen of a film Peter is working on.”

“At a film school, that couldn’t hurt.”

“And he wants to go to Yale Drama School after Knickerbocker.”

“I can get half a dozen letters to back him there. Just tell him to make outstanding grades, join some school organizations, and do some charity work.”

“I don’t think that will be a problem.”

“I’ll call you when I have a grip on this,” Eggers said. The two men shook hands and Stone headed for home, a ten-minute walk.

As Stone walked into his office Joan called out, “Bill Eggers on line one.”